How can we tell what students are thinking?

Responsive teachers track student thinking to adapt teaching during lessons. Knowing whether students are making sense of key ideas is essential, but teachers often rely on responses from students who are willing to participate. We should check what students know, not whether they are confident, which may be misleading. A hinge question allows us to do this. With a multiple choice question, each answer encapsulates a student misconception; this means we can predict student errors and respond accordingly.