Paste five answers, ask for the pattern
You can feel the class-wide gap while marking. AI can name it, with evidence, in the time it takes to paste.
Sep 5, 2026 · 1 min read
The formative assessment literature is clear that the payoff of looking at student work is adjusting the teaching, not just scoring the pile (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Wiliam, 2011). AI is genuinely good at the middle step teachers rarely have time for: reading a handful of responses side by side and naming what the errors have in common. (Manning's gap-analysis-from-student-work skill is built around this move.)
In practice
Here are five anonymised student answers to the same question.
Name the two most common gaps, quote the evidence for each
from the answers, and suggest one ten-minute reteach activity
per gap. Do not grade the answers.- Pick the five deliberately: two strong, two middling, one weak reads the room better than five random.
- Check its pattern against your own hunch before acting; when they disagree, reread the answers, because one of you saw something.
- Anonymise before pasting, every time (see "Never paste student names into a chatbot").
Quick takeaway: mark for the marks, but read for the pattern, and let AI draft the pattern.