Project one answer and analyse it together
Collect the work, pick one answer, put it under the visualiser, and let the class do the marking. One artefact, thirty people thinking.
Oct 6, 2026 · 1 min read
Lemov (2021) calls it Show Call: display one student's actual work and analyse it as a class. It does two jobs at once. The class rehearses the success criteria on a real artefact rather than an idealised model, and every student writes differently once their work might become the text. Pick the piece for its teaching value (a strong opening, a productive error), not for its extremes. (Manning's checking-for-understanding-protocol-designer skill includes show call among its whole-class evidence techniques.)
In practice
- Choose the piece for one teachable feature and name it up front: 'we are looking at how this answer uses the source, nothing else.'
- Start with what works before what to improve, and keep the analysis about the work, never about the writer.
- Have everyone upgrade their own answer immediately after the analysis; the projection is the means, the revision is the point.
- Rotate fairly across weeks so strong, middling and developing work all appear; if only excellence gets shown, the message becomes about status, not learning (see "Paste five answers, ask for the pattern").
Show work with the name covered unless the student has agreed to be identified.
Quick takeaway: one real answer on the screen teaches the criteria better than a perfect model ever does.