Who finds that the same student always calls out a response to your questions? Or that Jessie-sitting-in-the-far-back-corner-with-wireless-headphones-not-so-concealed-under-her-hair never does? All teachers have an image of the student whose arm looks like it is about to pop out of its socket because THEY KNOW THE ANSWER and sighs when you once again don’t call on them.

Classroom environments create a universe that doesn’t really exist in the real world. In what other setting do we have a discussion, where one person controls, receives and approves of everyone else’s responses? Where else do we have to raise a hand to answer a question?

Getting REAL discussions going and having all students engage in the questions that teachers ask can be tough, so here are some strategies that we use to ensure that all students are checked in whilst in our classrooms.

Strategy One: Hands down.

This is essentially random questioning, or cold calling, and I first heard about this strategy from a PD that Dylan Wiliam ran - he called the strategy ‘No hand’s up unless to ask a question’.

My take on it does require a little initial preparation and a lot of practice. To begin, I print out photos of our class list and laminate them, cutting them into tiny little photo frames (see my example below feat. the Klass of Kardashian). These class sets are wrapped in an elastic band, kept in our pencil case and I use them every. single. lesson. This is the key to ensuring that students hands stay down - if you commit to it, students know that this is just how things are done in your classroom.

1. Ask your question or deliver a statement. It is essential that you do this first, because you want all students to think that you might call on them to respond to it. E.g. ‘What was the main cause of WWII?’ or ‘The Treaty of Versailles was the main cause of WWII’. Both will deliver similar responses, but statements can be less threatening if you ask students what they think of it, rather than asking a question that they think needs a ‘correct’ answer.

2. Give wait time. You want all students to formulate a response. Aim for a minimum of 3 seconds (feels like a lifetime!), and longer if you can

3. At random, pull out a face from the pack. Sometimes I ask students to do this for me, so they know I am not targeting anyone.

4. Call on chosen student to respond. Give additional wait time if necessary.

5. Pull out another face from the pack and ask them to respond. It could be a statement like, “What do you think, Charlie?” or “Do you have anything to add?” or “Can you summarise Michelle’s response?”. The point of this is to ensure that students are both listening to each other, and not always looking to the teacher to approve of their responses.

6. Put the cards of the students who have responded back into the pack. This means that they can’t relax once they have been called on - they might get called out again for the next response!

7. Repeat.

As high school teachers, we often teach over 100 students, so having laminated cards with their name and photo of it allows me to learn student names quickly AND use random questioning all year round. You can also use the face cards to organise group work by placing their names on different tables. Win win.

If you would like to read more about this style of questioning, the NSW Department of Education has also has great summary of strategies here.

Strategy Two: Interior Design

We know that interior design is more than just moving a few tables and chairs, but simple adjustments to our classroom layout can be really effective to get your students talking. Running discussions in rows can be problematic, because students are literally responding to the backs of other student’s heads. When we run our discussions like this, we revert back to one-on-one exchanges between the teacher and an individual student. My personal preference is to have the default set up in a discussion style, and in Literature we often ditch the tables all together and sit in conversational circles to unpack the book. If students are participating in group work, I always make them sit around two tables that have been pushed together and face one another.

It works well to have a picture similar to the one below printed in the classroom with the different layouts that you like to use - that way, the students can quickly put the tables and chairs into the arrangement needed depending on the lesson. Feel free to use the one below, or customise your own to suit your classroom design.

References:

Dylan Wiliam Center. 2020. Practical Ideas for Classroom Formative Assessment. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.dylanwiliamcenter.com/2015/02/03/practical-ideas-for-classroom-formative-assessment/. [Accessed 30 January 2020].

NSW Department of Education. 2020. Key Questioning Strategies. [ONLINE] Available at: https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/professional-learning/teacher-quality-and-accreditation/strong-start-great-teachers/refining-practice/teacher-questioning/key-questioning-strategies. [Accessed 30 January 2020].