The board

The board is where a learner's own knowledge becomes visible to them, which is the thing that makes the rest of the session possible.

The first column takes two kinds of knowing, and learners mark which is which. What I know about my subject, which nobody else in the room has. And what I know about how the thing works, which I had to go and find out. The gap between those two is what the whole session is about.

The second column fills the moment a learner picks a rung off the ladder. Choosing Respond over Reveal raises real questions: where the answer goes, what happens when nobody picks anything.

The third column has the gate on it. Nothing goes in until the learner can say how they would know it came back wrong. A facilitator checks it by pointing at one line and asking that question out loud.

In the last session learners go back and tick anything that moved from the middle column into the first. Usually two or three things. That short list is the learner's own evidence that they learned something, and it is worth more than whatever they built.