This post is an extract from Bringing the English Curriculum to Life.

In order to teach responsively, teachers need to be able to quickly identify misconceptions and check students’ understanding.

A hinge question is a diagnostic tool deployed at a point in a lesson – the hinge – where teachers need to know whether students are ready to move on require further instruction. Students’ responses should provide teachers with information about what actions they should take next. A well-designed hinge question should reveal potential misconceptions which can then be addressed.

Students need to be able to answer the hinge question quickly – ideally in less than two minutes – and teachers should be able to read and interpret answers in about 30 seconds. For this to be possible, students will need to complete answers on MWBs (so teachers can scan answers at speed) and questions must be asked in a multiple-choice format (so students don’t waste time writing down anything other than a, b, c or d.)

Writing effective multiple-choice questions (MCQs) takes practice. The aim should be to eliminate guessing: students who know the answer should get it right; students who don’t know the answer should be distracted by one of the distractors. An MCQ should have an unambiguously correct answer and at least two distractors. Consider this example:

What is a volta?

  1. Where the tone of a poem becomes negative
  2. The halfway point of a poem
  3. A change in mood or thought or both

One of the keys of writing distractors is that they should be plausible and expose potential errors in students’ understanding. Poorly written MCQs often contain implausible, or even absurd, potential answers which make it easier for students to guess the correct answer. We’re used to seeing these kinds of MCQs on TV phone-in quizzes:

Who wrote Romeo and Juliet?

  1. William Shakespeare
  2. Mickey Mouse
  3. Ant and Dec

Ideally, distractors should contain true information which does not accurately answer the question. They should also be tempting. Students should have to think through why they’re wrong. If all distractors are not equally plausible, questions can end up being simply true or false, which students then have a fifty-fifty chance of guessing correctly.

With the example given above, ‘What is a volta?’ c) is unambiguously correct, the other two answers are, hopefully, plausible and based on common misconceptions. Students often come to think that a volta must be negative (it may be sometimes but by no means always) or that it will come at the halfway point (again, it might, especially in a Petrarchan sonnet, but it doesn’t have to). If students are tempted by either of these options, the teacher will know they have to either review curriculum materials to make sure the definition is more clearly stated or finesse their teaching to ensure the definition doesn’t go missing

Imagine that students have just read Wilfred Owen’s ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’. If they are not clear on the meaning of the poem, they will struggle to meaningfully analyse it. This is a clear hinge point in a lesson: can you move on to analysing linguistic techniques or does the poem require further explanation and discussion? Instead of checking with the one or two students with their hands up, an MCQ will provide a snapshot of all students:

Why did Wilfred Owen write ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’? Which of the following statements are most accurate?

  1. To celebrate the bravery of the soldiers
  2. To criticise the horrors of war
  3. To expose the trauma experienced by soldiers
  4. To reveal the lack of comforts soldiers experienced

The first distractor (a) should be completely implausible except for the fact that students, if they haven’t been paying attention, may assume that this is what all war poems are doing. The final distractor (d) is true but not does fulfil the criteria of being ‘most accurate’ when compared with (b) and (c) which are equally true and are therefore both acceptable as answers. The fact that there are two correct answers now opens up the possibility of a structured discussion around which of these statements students feel is the best fit.

Hinge questions can – and should – also be used to check that students have understood the big ideas which underpin a text. Here’s an MCQ on another Wilfred Owen poem:

Which sentence most accurately describes the poem ‘Exposure’?

  1. Owen describes the soldiers’ exposure to harsh weather conditions such as ‘merciless iced east winds that knive us’
  2. Owen illustrates the soldiers’ exposure to enemy fire such as when ‘bullets streak the silence’
  3. Owen depicts the suffering caused by exposure to conditions in the trenches

Here, the two distractors are both correct answers made more plausible by their length (often used by students as a proxy for accuracy) and the fact that they contain quotes from the poem. In this case, (c) is the most accurate answer because it doesn’t limit the notion of ‘exposure’ to either weather or enemy fire but encapsulates both in ‘conditions in the trenches’.

What is Mrs Birling’s function in the play? Pick two answers:

  1. To highlight the vulnerability of the lower classes
  2. To demonstrate how horrible some members of the middle classes could be
  3. To convey the lack of empathy in society towards the lower classes
  4. To look down on the Inspector and show her contempt for those in power

In this example, students are being asked to show their understanding that characters are constructs used to represent a writer’s intentions. If they have fully understood this they ought to choose (a) and (c) but if they haven’t they may be tempted by b) because it’s difficult for some students to get past how unsympathetic they think Mrs Birling is or (d) because this seems to describe her behaviour towards the Inspector. Again, after the question has been reviewed, there’s an opportunity for low-stakes discussion about why some answers are better than others.

I would recommend using two or at most three distractors. Although including more distractors results in making it statistically harder for students to get the correct answer through guessing, this benefit is outweighed by the cost of the time and effort it takes to come up with plausible distractors that help reveal students’ misconceptions. And remember, if students are guessing, the hinge question probably is not well designed.

Finally, although it’s far from fool-proof, a time saving saving suggestion is to paste the following prompt into ChatGPT and ask it to come up with HPQs for whatever you happen to be teaching:

Hinge point questions have the following characteristics:

  • Diagnostic questions asked at the point in the lesson where you need to check if students are ready to move on
  • Used to check understanding of key ideas and/or concepts so the teacher can decide next steps
  • Address potential misconceptions
  • All students can realistically respond less than two minutes, ideally in less than a minute
  • Teachers can realistically view and interpret all student responses in thirty seconds.

Design a hinge point question on….

Brief literature review

For those that are interested, several studies have investigated the effectiveness of hinge point questions in various settings, and the evidence supports their use. Black & Wiliam (1998) found that using hinge point questions in a classroom setting helped teachers identify students’ misunderstandings and adjust their teaching methods accordingly. A study by Brindley et al. (2016) found that using hinge point questions in geography helped students retain information better and improve their critical thinking skills. Brame (2013) conducted a literature review of the use of hinge point questions and found that they can be effective in a range of educational settings, particularly useful in large lecture-style courses, where it can be challenging for instructors to gauge students’ understanding of course material. Clark (2015) investigated the use of hinge point questions in an online learning environment and found that they were effective in promoting critical thinking and student engagement. Clark noted that hinge point questions can help students stay focused on the most important material and can provide opportunities for students to apply their knowledge. Haladyna et al. (2002) conducted a study on the use of hinge point questions in standardised tests and found that they were effective in improving the quality of test questions. The authors noted that hinge point questions can help ensure that tests are measuring students’ understanding of key concepts rather than just their ability to memorise facts. Also, Zimmaro (2010) investigated the use of hinge point questions in a university-level statistics course. The study found that using hinge point questions was effective in promoting student engagement and understanding of key concepts. In particular, hinge point questions were shown to be helpful in identifying misunderstandings and guiding further discussion and explanation of difficult topics. Incidentally, this study also found that students appreciated the use of hinge point questions and felt that they were beneficial for their learning.