The benefits of using Cold Call in the classroom are pretty clear. It helps ensure that students are always mentally ‘on’ during a lesson and it allows teachers to question quickly and efficiently, especially to make sure that students know what they need to know—to Check for Understanding. These ideas are critical in a coaching…
This morning we watched two great clips of first grade teacher Jennifer Crucetti Cold Calling her first graders on the second day of school at Abram Lansing Elementary in Cohoes, NY. Cold Call, as you may know, is a hugely powerful tool in the classroom when it’s a normal and positive part of the lives of…
I’m on my way back from New Zealand today. In the course of doing some training down there for NZ Rugby coaches, I met a music teacher from the South Island named Sam Hadfield. He’d been experimenting with a few carefully chosen techniques—Cold Call, No Opt Out, Right is Right—in his classroom with generally positive…
One of our most useful clips of the Cold Call technique is this short-but-super clip of Alex Timoll at Excellence Boys Charter School in Bed Stuy Brooklyn. There are a ton of things you could take away from it, and from Alex’s teaching generally, but there are three especially useful lessons i think that every teacher…
Cold Call, as you probably know if you read this blog regularly, is one of my favorite techniques– meaning that it’s one of the techniques that has the greatest potential to increase the rigor and engagement in a classroom. I also love that it can be used by almost any teacher, and in concert…