Do Mini Whiteboards have limitations?
Regular readers will know I’m pretty partial to using Mini Whiteboards in lessons. For a recap on the perceived pros and cons of using them, especially in English lessons, take a look at this post I wrote back in 2022. I know I’m the victim of being at the centre of my own bubble but since then, I’ve found that schools seem to be focussing on using MWBs much more consistently and I regularly see teachers using them with far greater skill.
Their growing popularity has, inevitably, produced a backlash. Several commentators have begun warning teachers about the risks of overusing them, so it seems worth taking those concerns seriously.
First, here’s a post by no less an authority than Doug Lemov:
Here’s a summary of Doug’s downsides:
MWB writing is transient. Once they’re wiped away, students’ answers are unavailable for future reference
MWBs can encourage haste. Because the format rewards quick responses, students may write less carefully than they would on paper. Writing more slowly supports better word choice, deeper thinking and stronger encoding.
MWBs can become a crutch. Because they make participation feel simple they can become a crutch. Teachers still need other tools, such as cold call and stop and jot.
Let’s consider each of these limitations in turn.
1. The transience problem
I’ve always considered transience to be one of the great strengths of MWBs. They provide a midpoint between the complete transience of speech and the durability of writing.
Spoken language’s power stems from its immediacy. It allows us to try out ideas, respond to others, clarify uncertainty and participate before thoughts are fully formed. It’s socially supported: gesture, tone, facial expression, prompting and the surrounding environment all help meaning along. But that’s also its weakness. Spoken language is informal, fragmented and context-dependent. It disappears as soon as it is uttered. A student may say something promising, but unless it is captured, refined or rehearsed, it rarely becomes something they can use later.
Writing has almost the opposite strengths and weaknesses. Because it’s durable, it can be checked, improved and assessed. It forces students to make meaning explicit because the reader cannot rely on tone, gesture or shared context. Writing demands clarity, structure and independence from speaker support. But this durability also raises the stakes. A sentence written in an exercise book can have a daunting permanence. For many students, that makes participation slower, riskier and more exposing. They may write less because they are afraid of being wrong, or because the gap between what they can half-say and what they can properly write feels too great.
MWBs occupy a unique position between these two modes. They turn thought into visible language without making it feel final. They give teachers something more visible, more perceptible, than speech, but less intimidating and quicker to respond to than writing in books. Because errors can be wiped away, students are more willing to take risks, make corrections and improve their thinking. Because answers are written, teachers can see misconceptions, compare responses and shape next steps.
MWBs are, in my view, an essential pivot, helping students move from fleeting talk towards more durable writing. They’re a rehearsal space — a sandbox — where thought can be externalised, tested, corrected and sharpened before it’s either committed to the page and shared with a wider audience. They provide a means of making thought visible while it’s still forming. Much of what’s written on whiteboards should be wiped away. I encourage students to use them as place holders to help them articulate their ideas more fluently. The act of having said something aloud provides an internal durability that rarely comes from simply reading or hearing an idea.
Obviously, if we were to decide that whiteboards were an end point, Doug’s criticism would be more valid. If students only ever jotted on MWBs, much would be lost. As such, they should be seen as a stepping stone. If something’s worth keeping, it should be transferred into an exercise book once it has been checked and improved. The problem isn’t disposability it’s the understandable tendency to confuse rehearsal with recording.
2. The sloppiness problem
The sloppiness problem is real, but it’s a feature, not a bug. There are moments when rough, unconnected jottings are exactly what students need. When I ask an open question and then select a student to answer, it’s perfectly reasonable for that student not to have a polished response ready. Thinking time helps, but it doesn’t solve everything. Under pressure, students can freeze; ideas that were available a moment earlier can disappear under pressure.
MWBs reduce that problem, allowing students to jot down partial thoughts, key words, fragments of evidence or possible sentence openings before they are asked to speak. This gives them something to hold on to while they assemble an answer. Roughness is not always carelessness but a stepping stone to coherence. The board helps students bridge the gap between having a thought and being able to articulate it under pressure.
That said, there are other times — especially if I want students to demonstrate mastery of a process — when accuracy matters. If I’ve asked students to polish an answer, I’ll circulate to pick up errors. If I notice a missing capital, a misplaced comma or a spelling mistake I’ll point it out and ensure it’s corrected. Then, at the point where students have written something they can be proud of, I’d get them to transfer into their exercise books.
3. The crutch problem
Any tool has the potential to become a bad habit when it starts replacing professional judgement but to describe MWBs as a crutch is — I think — to miss the point. Some tools are essential. It would be absurd to expect a surveyor to make measurements without a theodolite or a surgeon to perform an operation without a scalpel. I feel the same way about MWBs in teaching. Could I teach without one? Yes, of course. But could I teach effectively without a MWB? Emphatically, no.
To that end, I’d dispute the idea that MWBs are a crutch. Crutches are only used to compensate for injury or weakness. Thinking of them as a crutch implies that only the unskilled would rely on them. MWBs extend a teacher’s perception and make visible what would otherwise remain hidden. But just because MWBs are an essential and invaluable tool in a teacher’s toolbox, does not mean either that they’re sufficient for every eventuality or that other tools aren’t also required.
The craftsperson analogy cuts both ways. A craftsperson needs many tools, but they also need to know which tools are unusually good for particular jobs. MWBs are no substitute for deep writing, extended thought or permanent notes but (for all their weaknesses) they’re the absolute best way of ensuring 100% participation, rehearsing for oral answers and providing opportunities for correction and refinement before committing to a more permanent response. The idea that MWBs somehow replace ‘cold call’ or targeted questioning seems odd to me. They are mutually reinforcing. If students have first jotted a word, phrase, quotation or sentence stem, their answers to targeted questions are usually more coherent. And, as far as I can see, ‘stop and jot’ is always best done on a MWB; it’s quick, provisional, visible and easy to correct.
All these ‘limitations’ are solved when teachers know why they’re using the tool. It should be clear that MWBS are the wrong tool when we want extended written fluency, make durable notes, sustain an argument or write at length. And, as I’ve written before, MWBs can and should be deployed differently to find out whether students are paying attention, making meaning or developing mastery.
Another potential source of misunderstanding about the limitations of MWBs stems from response on Twitter to a presentation given by Adam Robbins at researchED NYC.
I don’t want to cast aspersions on either Adam or North Landesman, but the tweet above confused me. I responded by asking, “Why would students just look at each other’s whiteboard? Struggling to see how or why this would happen.”
Without being at the talk, I can’t be sure but I think Adam’s point is that unless we have a structured ‘show me’ routine, students will simply copy the answers of those who have already written an answer, potentially misleading teachers into thinking students understand something they don’t. I guess this can and does happen but it doesn’t have to.
4. The copying problem
I try to make it clear to students that the reason I ask questions is to find things out. In general, I’m much more interested in wrong answers than right ones. Right answers may be reassuring, but wrong answers reveal hidden seams of misconceptions that need addressing.
One way I use MWBs is to check students’ perception of whether they understand a word. In a lesson on An Inspector Calls, we were discussing Gerald’s description of prostitutes as “dough-faced”. It became clear that one student didn’t seem to know what dough was, so I wanted to find out how widespread the issue was. I asked students to write 1 on their boards if they were confident they understood the meaning of dough, 2 if they weren’t sure, and 3 if they had no clue. Almost all the students showed a 2 or 3. That made the next instructional decision obvious: I needed to teach the word.
Now, perhaps some students copied a neighbour’s answer. I’ve no way of knowing for certain. But in this case, I can’t see that it would have made much difference. Unless a significant majority of the class secretly understood the word but were too embarrassed to admit it, I would have responded in exactly the same way. MWBs don’t need to provide perfect data to be useful. They just need to provide sufficient information to make better teaching decisions.
The important point is classroom culture. If students believe they’re rewarded for right answers and penalised for wrong ones, then of course they’ll look for ways to game the process. Copying, hiding, waiting and guessing are all rational responses to a classroom culture in which being wrong feels costly.
But I’m regularly surprised by how seldom students copy from their neighbours. I’ll often watch a student read someone else’s answer and then make no change to their own. I take that as a sign that they understand why I’m asking the question. If students are interested in understanding the curriculum (and almost all children are, whatever their outward behaviour might suggest) then they can see that it’s in their interests to show me what they actually think. A copied answer might look good in the moment, but it deprives me of the information I need to help them. Once they understand that, the incentive to ‘cheat’ is removed.
Of course, none of this happens by accident. It’s my responsibility to create the conditions in which honest answers are understood to be more valuable than correct-looking ones. That means rewarding students for giving me accurate information, treating wrong answers as useful, and praising the intellectual courage involved in taking risks.
Despite MWBs being one of, if not the, most useful tools available to teachers, they’re nomagical panacea. Used thoughtlessly, they can encourage haste, superficial participation and the illusion that everyone understands. But that’s true of any routine or strategy: cold call can switch between bullying and jazz hands; book work easily devolves into copying; class discussion can become distration and noise. The question isn’t whether a tool has limitations — all tools do — but whether teachers know why they’re deploying a particular tool.
MWBs aren’t a substitute for writing, thought or professional judgement. They are, however, a way of making thought visible while it’s still shapeable. They occupy a liminal position between speech and writing, uncertainty and commitment, first attempts and improved answers. They allow students risk being wrong without making mistakes permanent. They enable teachers to see what needs teaching before a misconception takes hold. The danger — as with any teaching technique — is forgetting why we’re using them. If they’re used to generate performance or tick a box then it should be no surprise that their use results in unintended consequences. But when they’re used to generate information, they’re hard to beat.
An interesting view, largely supported by this old, retired man of low intellect.
In my first few years of attending school, I had a slate board and a slate pencil that left a visible mark on the 'Mini Black Board' or slate. That was nearly 70 years ago.
We cleaned the slate board with spit and a finger, neither of which needed replacing and both were free. ps. Apologies if this offends.
Mini White Boards are a tool which can be used brilliantly or badly. Asking if any technique can be done well is possibly the wrong question. The question is, over time, what will get the better results?
Running 10,000 meters a day should unquestionably make me lose more weight than walking 10,000 meters a day.
But, which habit is easier to acquire? Which habit will be easier to sustain? Which one will not affect my appetite and cause me to eat more? A 6 week experiment will pitch one against the other. For most people, the answer will be to walk 10,000 steps a day, although for a few, running will be way more effective.
I suspect that MWB. fall into the latter category - for most teachers they will slow progress down. For the few converts, they'll work. But those converts are not a reason to try to convert everyone. If it can't scale, it won't work.