Plausible Distractors

The strategy, as published

Exactly as it appears on the card

Part of Elicit Evidence of Learning in 02 Formative Assessment, where it sits alongside its neighbouring strategies, the infographic and the thinking for the whole area.

Why you might use it

The problem it may help with

A multiple choice question with throwaway wrong answers tells you one thing: right or wrong. Engineer each distractor to map onto a real misconception and the same question tells you why a pupil is wrong, which is the information you can actually teach from. As the card has it, wrong answers are the diagnostic data.

What it might look like

One version of it, in a classroom

For a question on photosynthesis, a science teacher writes three distractors from errors seen in books: plants get their food from the soil, plants only respire at night, and oxygen is what plants take in rather than give out. Whichever option a pupil picks, the teacher knows which idea to revisit.

Try it

A way to begin

Take one question you already use and rewrite its wrong answers from the errors in your current marking. The misconceptions are already in the books; the work is moving them into the options.

What to notice

Reading what happens

• Which distractor draws the most pupils. The pattern is more useful than the score.
• A distractor nobody ever picks. It tells you nothing; replace it with an error pupils actually make.
• Whether the same misconception resurfaces weeks later. A question worth engineering once is worth reusing.

Things to think about

Before and while you use it

• This is where the planning cost of a hinge question lives, and why the card treats the wrong answers as carefully as the right one. Improvised distractors collapse the diagnosis.

Related strategies

Where this connects

• 🔀 Hinge Questions A hinge question is a diagnostic question at a lesson turning point. Wrong answers each map to a known misconception. Responses tell you whether to move on or go back. Never improvise it. 02 Formative Assessment · Elicit Evidence of Learning
• ✍️ Mini Whiteboards All students write their response and hold it up simultaneously. The teacher reads the room in seconds: full participation, no waiting, no dominant voices. Works across all subjects. 02 Formative Assessment · Elicit Evidence of Learning
• 🃏 ABCD Response Cards Give each student a card: A, B, C and D. Pose a question and all students hold up their answer at once. No hands, no opt-out. The spread of responses shows instantly where misconceptions lie. 02 Formative Assessment · Elicit Evidence of Learning
• 🔎 Questions as Evidence of Understanding A student’s question reveals the depth of their understanding. Ask for one written question before leaving. Why does X cause Y? shows far more than What is X?. Questions are windows. 04 Questioning & Discussion · Student-Generated Questions

Technology second

Where technology fits

The approved quiz tool in your setting that shows the full spread of responses, not just the proportion correct, is what turns carefully built distractors into evidence: you can see at a glance which misconception the room holds, from every pupil at once rather than the few who would have spoken. The chart has done nothing, though, until it changes what you teach in the next five minutes.

The wider thinking

Where the evidence sits

Diagnostic questioning built on known misconceptions runs through Black and Wiliam's account of eliciting evidence: the point of asking is to find out what pupils actually think, not to confirm what you hope they think. The card’s attribution stands as published: Wiliam, Black.

The fuller picture, sources included, is in further reading and evidence for Formative Assessment.