Doug Lemov's field notes

In our workshops on Cold Call we often provide a summary of four key things teachers can do while Cold Calling to ensure that the experience is positive, productive and successful.

They are:

1) Preparation. Giving students time to prepare answers before a Cold Call helps them to develop quality ideas and often rehearse them in a small group before sharing them with the large group. Ideally then, letting students write their ideas first (Stop and Jot) or Turn and Talk with a classmate or both is a great way to ensure both success (from a student POV) and higher quality answers.

2) Honor the work. Using the preparation time to look for useful answers and often narrating that that Cold Call is a result of quality work during the preparation ensures that you get quality answers that make students feel successful. We call it “hunting not fishing” when a teacher circulating during the Stop and Jot  Turn and Talk and finds answers that are ideal to start with- either because they are interesting or because they allow the teacher to bring a student who might be quieter into the conversation. You can often make this process legible by saying, “Juan, i love what you wrote about X. Can you tell us a bit about that?” Now the student feels like the Cold Call is an honor.

3) Formative language. Cold Calling a student with language that reminds him or her that he or she doesn’t need to be perfect is another way to lower the stakes.  “Juan, can you get us started talking about…” implies to Juan that his ideas don’t have to be perfect.  And it reminds the rest of the class that you’ll probably ask them to develop Juan’s initial idea. (And tells Juan that when they do so this is normal and what you expected t have happen rather than a judgment on his answer.

4) Post-answer referencing. One of the most important signals to a student that their contribution was valuable to his or her peers is whether they talk about it afterwards. Peer to peer signals of interest are crucial to academic culture. Sure you can say: “Interesting, Juan. Thank you.” But even better is if Juan hears his peer talk with interest about what he said and show that they thought it was important.

You can see all of those elements in this excellent example from Scott Wells’ classroom at Goldsmith Primary Academy in Walsall, England.

Scott”s using our Reading Reconsidered curriculum and his students have read a nonfiction article about the medical condition that afflicts the narrator of Wonder, August. He wants his students to weigh in: Would August agree or disagree with this statement?

First, he gives them time to write out their thoughts in a quick Stop and Jot. Then they Turn and Talk.  By now everyone has thought through the question twice. And they’ve heard someone else’s answer. Preparation. Check.

During the Turn and Talk you can see Scott linger by one of his students, Lucas, whose a bit on the quiet side. Scott notices he has a strong answer. It’s an ideal time to invite him into the conversation. Honor the work. Check.

“Lucas, Start us off please…” Scott says. Formative language. Check.

As Lucas speaks his classmates are attentive and appreciative (see: Habits of Attention).

Then Scott asks the class to “agree, disagree or build.” They show their intention with a hand signal and Lucas can see that lots of students agree with him and others want to add on and “build” off of his thinking. (See image below).

Toby and Nathan weight in extensively, showing Lucas that his comments were worthwhile to them. Post-answer referencing. Check.

Note that while Toby has raised his hand, Nathan has not. Another Cold Call. But note the formative language: “Nathan, what are your thoughts?” It’s inviting and open and shows appreciation for Nathan. And it’s a hard question to get wrong. Just share your thoughts.

One of the key pieces of research on Cold Calling (Dallimore et al. 2013) found that “students in classes with high cold-calling answer more voluntary questions than those in classes with low cold-calling.”  That is, when you are cold called and feel successful you find it’s not so scary to participate. And you come to believe you are important to the class, perhaps.

A good Cold Call like Scott’s makes the classroom more inclusive.