do you want to show the value in the template your controller action returns? if so then the you need to pass your value in teh render/3 function, for example:

Given a controller:

defmodule MyAppWeb.MyController do
  use MyAppWeb, :controller


  def new(conn, params = %{"value" => my_value}) do
   # do your stuff
   render(conn, "new.html", value: my_value)
  end

end

render/3 accepts a keyword list or a map as last argument, so anything you need to send to template you put there with a key, so on you template you can access it as

<span><%= @value %></span>

btw, there is no such thing as dumb question!

Do you mind sharing your controller and template code?