Checking for Understanding & Feedback
Monitor, Don't Wander
Walk a planned route with one thing to check, and catch mistakes while they're fresh
Use this when
What is it?
Monitor, Don't Wander means circulating during independent practice with a plan: a route that reaches every desk, one thing you have decided to check for, and a pen that marks each student's work lightly as you pass. The approach works because the stretch of lesson when students work alone is where misconceptions first appear on paper, and a planned route lets you see the whole room's work while there is still lesson time left to act on it. Without a plan, circulating tends to drift towards the same few desks and tells you little you did not already know.
The steps
- Choose one target before the task starts. Pick something small and visible from what you have just taught: a unit on every answer, evidence in every paragraph, the same operation on both sides. One target per task is usually enough.
- Plan a route that reaches every desk. Decide on the path before the lesson and follow the same full path each time. Each complete pass is one lap; a fifteen-minute task gives you two or three. Visit your quickest workers early, because their pages tend to show the task's problems first.
- Tell the class what you will look for. Announce the target and the codes as you set the task. The announcement sharpens students' work before you reach a single desk:While you work, I'm checking one thing: a unit on every answer. A tick means it's there. A dot means look at that line again.
- Make the first lap quick. Walk the route once in the first minute or two, checking only that everyone has started and that the first answer has begun soundly. An error caught on line one is not then practised for the next twenty minutes.
- Mark lightly and keep moving. Tick a sound line as you pass. Put a dot beside an error and keep walking. Keep most desk stops to around half a minute, and save full explanations for the debrief or a return visit.
- Count the pattern and debrief it. Keep a count of the dots, on the seating plan or in your head. When several desks share the same error, stop the class and address it once:Pens down for a minute. Nine of you rounded too early. Watch me do the last step again, then check yours.
What it looks like
Mr Beaumont's class of 13-year-olds is practising two-step equations. "I'm checking one thing while you work: the same operation on both sides, written down. Tick means you have it. Dot means look again." He sets off from the back corner with his pen out. Tick, tick, tick, dot.
At Dev's desk he is three sentences into re-explaining inverses when he hears the murmur rising behind him and stops himself. "That's your first move. I'll be back." Two laps in, his tally shows seven desks with the same slip. "Pens down. Seven of you subtracted three from the left side only. Watch." He works through one equation on the board, both sides showing, and sets the class off again. On his next lap, Dev's second line earns a tick.
How you’ll know it’s working
- Watched from the back of the room, the route is visible: across ten minutes of practice, the teacher reaches every desk at least once, awkward corners included.
- Desk stops stay short. Film a lesson and time them: most last around half a minute or less, and no single stop stretches to several minutes.
- Books carry marks made during the lesson, and corrections appear beside the dots while the practice is still running.
- The debrief draws on counts. The teacher can say how many students made the error, and marking in the evening rarely produces surprises.
Pitfalls & fixes
- Drifting to the same three desks. The table that struggles and the table that chats both pull at the route, and the quiet middle can go a week without a visit. Decide on the path in advance, and start each lap in the corner you would naturally leave until last.
- Settling in for a reteach. One stuck student can absorb a whole lap while the rest of the room works unseen. Give the dot and one sentence, then promise to return. If three or four desks need the same reteach, the whole class probably does, so it belongs in the debrief.
- Circulating without a target. A lap spent checking everything tends to register only handwriting and effort. Name one target per task before you set off, and change it as the work changes.
- Turning the lap into marking. Write a sentence at every desk and you will reach only six desks before the practice ends. Keep to ticks and dots, and let the debrief carry the explanation.
Weigh it up
Why it’s worth it
- Misconceptions surface while the lesson can still respond. The error you would otherwise have discovered in a pile of books on Sunday shows up at a desk on Tuesday, minutes after it was made, with time left to fix it.
- The feedback gets used. A dot beside a line written a minute ago tends to be checked and corrected on the spot; comments returned a week later rarely manage that.
- It cuts marking. By the end of the practice the books already carry your marks and you already know the pattern, so later marking becomes a skim, and one whole-class fix can replace thirty written comments (see Whole-Class Feedback).
- Practice stays on task with hardly a correction needed. A teacher on a route reaches every desk in turn, so blank pages get started and side conversations tend to end as you approach.
- It stocks the rest of your teaching with genuine material: a strong answer worth sharing, a common error worth discussing, something precise to praise by name.
The costs
- It uses the stretch of lesson many teachers rely on to catch their breath, set up the next task or deal with the register. While the class practises, you are working.
- One target means walking past other errors without dotting them, and doing so calmly takes discipline for the first few weeks.
- It is physically demanding. Several practice blocks a day on your feet, in rooms where bags and fixed benches obstruct the route, is a real cost by Friday.
Adaptations
- Early years / lower primary: targets are physical before they are academic: pencil grip, number formation, finger spaces. Work at table height, and swap the written dot for a spoken one: "check this one for me."
- Secondary: teach the codes once, early in the year, and reuse them until summer, so that a margin dot needs no conversation. Students can keep their own count of dots across a topic and watch the tally fall.
- Post-16 / adult: a circulating teacher can read as surveillance, so present the route as a service and keep stops invited: "I'm coming round checking references. Wave if you want yours looked at first."
- Practical subjects (labs, workshops, PE): the work is an action, so the pen gives way to observation. Choose one technique point per lap, such as elbow height or flame colour, and debrief with a freeze and a demonstration.
Where this comes from
Doug Lemov codified purposeful circulation for schools in Teach Like a Champion, under the names 'Circulate' and 'Active Observation', and Paul Bambrick-Santoyo teaches a tightly scripted version, 'Aggressive Monitoring', in Get Better Faster. The ground underneath is better evidenced than the label suggests: the classroom studies Rosenshine summarises found that students were more engaged when their teacher circulated and monitored their practice, with the most effective desk contacts lasting about half a minute or less; and acting mid-lesson on what the work shows is formative assessment, the territory Black and Wiliam mapped. What has not been trialled is the package on this page, with its route, single target and marking codes, so the grading stays at teacher craft.
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