Doesn’t Allow the Teacher to Check for Mastery

When teachers do not use signals effectively, students do not respond or respond out of time with the signal. Thus, they are not giving an independent answer and are unable to demonstrate their understanding of the content.

When students respond by providing late responses after the signal, they may be relying on the answers of other students, essentially masking that they have not understood the content.

When students provide scattered responses out of sequence, it is difficult for the teacher to determine who responded correctly, who responded incorrectly and who did not respond at all.

The teacher is not able to determine which students know the content. Without continuous feedback, the teacher is unable to identify students who have or have not mastered the content, no matter how attentively they listens to the students’ responses.

What happens in this case:

The problem is compounded.The teacher cannot make informed decisions about their teaching as they do not have sufficient information to confidently assess that students are at mastery.When they move on to independent work, they find that not all students have mastered the content. They must go back and reteach that part of the lesson to ensure that students are firm. This results in less learning in that week. If the problem is not remedied, this could affect the learning time available over the term and year. Some teachers may choose to just move on, resulting in those students never learning the content.