Checking for Understanding & Feedback
Project Their Work
Study real work from the room together, so everyone sees what good actually looks like
Use this when
What is it?
Project Their Work is the practice of putting one student's actual work under the visualiser (a document camera) and studying it as a class. You celebrate strong work with the writer's name attached, study errors with no name on them, and annotate the piece live as the class discusses it. The approach works because students see the standard in work like their own, written in the same room that lesson, which makes comparing it with their own page a short, concrete step.
The steps
- Set the rules before the first projection. Use this technique once wrong answers already reach you calmly (see Make Mistakes Safe). Explain what the visualiser is for before any work goes up.Work goes up here so we can learn from it. Strong work goes up with your name, and only if you say yes. Work we fix goes up with no name on it.
- Choose the piece while students work. Circulate with one target in mind: a strength worth copying, or an error that several students share (see Monitor, Don't Wander). For strong work, ask the writer quietly at their desk.This second sentence really works. Can I show it to everyone later?
- Project it and set a silent read. Place the work under the visualiser. Give the class a job before any discussion begins.Read it once in silence. Find one move you could borrow for your own answer.
- Annotate the piece live. Take observations from the class and mark each one on the work itself. Underline the strong phrase and label the move it makes. Keeping the pen on the work keeps the discussion concrete.
- Work an error to a rewrite. When the piece contains a mistake, ask where the thinking slips and rewrite that line together. Keep the writer anonymous from the moment you choose the piece to the moment you project it: type the piece up, or copy it out in your own hand.
- End on their own work. Give everyone two or three minutes to apply what the class has seen to their own piece.You've seen what makes this opening work. Two minutes: make yours do the same job.
What it looks like
Mr Yardley's class of 15-year-olds is drafting opening paragraphs on the witches in Macbeth. He stops at Amber's desk and whispers, "Your second sentence really works. Can I show it?" She shrugs, then nods. Once the page is under the visualiser, he says, "Read Amber's opening in silence. What job is that second sentence doing?" Hands go up: it holds the answer back, it makes you read on. He underlines the sentence and writes delay in the margin.
Next he projects a flawed opening, typed up with no name. "Whose is that?" calls Ryan, craning round. "Mine now," says Mr Yardley. "Eyes on the sentence. Where does it lose its thread?" They rebuild the line together. Then everyone spends two minutes reworking their own second sentence. Amber's page stays up until the bell.
How you’ll know it’s working
- Students say yes when you ask to project their work, and after a few weeks some begin offering it before you ask.
- Comments on a projected piece name specific lines and moves, such as "the second sentence delays the answer", rather than offering verdicts like "it's good".
- The projected move appears in redrafts within the same lesson. Count the books that use it, and the number tends to rise across a half-term.
- When an anonymous error goes up, heads stay on the screen rather than turning to hunt for the writer.
Pitfalls & fixes
- Projecting as an ambush. Putting a weak piece up to make a point about effort teaches the class that the visualiser is a punishment, and students start drafting defensively. Choose work for what the class can learn from it, and keep errors anonymous until trust is well established.
- Only ever projecting errors. If appearing on the screen always means something went wrong, students will write to stay off it. Celebrate strong work at least as often as you fix flawed work, and keep the strong pieces named.
- Doing all the noticing yourself. If you annotate and explain while the class watches, the projection becomes just another teacher model. Set the silent read, take the class's observations first, and add your own only when theirs run out.
- Studying the piece, then moving on. Without the redraft minutes, the projection remains a pleasant conversation that changes nothing in the books. Protect the two or three minutes at the end, every time.
Weigh it up
Why it’s worth it
- The standard stops being abstract. Students see what good looks like in work from their own room, written that lesson, which often lands harder than a polished model from you or a textbook.
- It is close to the fastest feedback available. Five minutes on one piece reaches thirty students while the work is fresh, and no pen touches a book.
- Being projected by name becomes something students want. The status of careful written work rises, and effort on ordinary tasks tends to rise with it.
- It doubles as modelling. Annotating a real answer builds a worked example in front of the class, and the moves transfer into redrafts you can see the same lesson.
- It completes what Make Mistakes Safe begins. Errors become objects of shared study, and the claim that mistakes are information receives its most public test.
The costs
- It needs a display route that works in seconds: a visualiser, or a photo of the page sent to the screen. If the equipment takes two minutes of fiddling each time, you will quietly stop using it.
- The safety underneath it takes weeks to build, and one careless projection can undo much of it. The technique has to survive your worst-tempered day.
- A projection done properly, redraft included, takes about ten minutes of lesson time, and the redraft is the part you will be tempted to cut.
Adaptations
- Early years / lower primary: gather the class around one piece instead of projecting it, and celebrate a single habit by name: "Look at Betty's finger spaces." Save corrections for your own deliberately flawed examples, which you can produce as often as needed.
- Primary: project mid-task rather than only at the end, so that improvements land while the writing is still open. A photographed model or method from a practical lesson goes up just as well as a written page.
- Secondary: exam classes respond well to projecting an answer beside the mark scheme and scoring it together. Once the routine is established, two anonymous pieces side by side, one strong and one developing, sharpen the comparison.
- Post-16 / adult: adults can find public display of their work exposing, so ask permission for everything, including anonymous use. Present it as workshop practice: professionals share drafts for critique, and this room does the same.
Where this comes from
Doug Lemov codified this move as "Show Call" in Teach Like a Champion; we use a different name here. The everyday version, sharing a piece of work under the visualiser, is common practice in many schools and belongs to nobody. The research underneath is context rather than proof: Rosenshine's principles support studying models and examples together, and error-climate research explains why the anonymity rules matter. The projection routine itself has not been trialled.
Sources
Related techniques
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