08.24.21A Graphic Representation of Timing the Name in Cold Call
A few days ago I came across the above outstanding illustration created by Luke Tayler, a geography teacher in Bahrain. It captures in graphic form the power of timing the name during Cold Call.
The basic idea is that when students know you might Cold Call and you use a structure of question-pause-name for your question, you cause all of the students in the class to answer the question in their heads.
When you use the structure name-pause-question then you’re less likely to have everyone doing the cognitive work. There are of curse times when you might choose to use name-pause-question but as Luke’s elegant graphic makes clear, the default should be question pause name.
This morning over coffee I was mucking around with the idea of representing Cold Call graphically because others also seemed to find the image really compelling. I tried to put together a derivative graphic that captured the duration of student thinking that could be added by a Cold Call preceded by a Turn and Talk when (as the phrase “I’m going to ask a few of you” implies) students know the Cold Call is coming.
Similarly this version, which puts the Turn and Talk after the Cold Call and asks a harder question captures the desirable difficulty we can create. Not just who’s thinking but how hard:
There’s lots more you could do with this idea of representing the thinking graphically… unfortunately my mucking around with ideas time is done for the day. Thanks to Luke for the inspiration (and Kate Jones for sharing Luke’s work).
