Interacting with Multiple Choice Questions

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Multiple choice questions... What can I say... As a firm believer in allowing students to interact with content in many different ways to increase their depth of content knowledge, multiple choice questions may seem counterintuitive.  However, multiple choice questions provide a valuable assessment source and when written correctly can force students to persevere in problem-solving situations.

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One activity that I use to keep students engaged when answering multiple choice questions is having them work in partners to answer multiple choice questions.  The way I keep the entire class involved is by giving each set of partners cards with the answer choices from the multiple choice questions on them. 


Students then have 2-3 minutes (or longer depending on the rigorousness [...this is actually a word] of the question) to determine what their answer will be and choose the corresponding card.  I then instruct students to hold up the card that corresponds to what they think the answer is. A quick scan of the cards assesses the students understanding of the content.

Many possible things could happen (all which make for great learning, interacting, and exploring scenarios): 

  • Students could have the same answers (and we could talk about why the other answers are distractions)
  • Students could have a variety of wrong answers (this could spark healthy debate)
  • One group could have a different answer (and could be asked to justify their answer)
  • The possibilities are endless...

My students really enjoy this activity, especially as an alternative to simply working out the questions independently.  

This activity could also be paired with a justification worksheet (that can be found here). If you do not have these fancy cards or you like using technology, Plickers (link here) is a website that uses the same concept, but scans a QR code that the students hold up).  Using this variation would decrease the ability of students to "steal" each others answers as well as provide a way for you to capture the data for later analysis. Here are some instructions on how to use this website.

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What materials could you use this strategy with? 

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