Up here at TLAC Towers, Show Call is one of our very favorite techniques. Think of it as a visual Cold Call with a whole lot of additional benefits. In a Show Call you present a piece of student work, chosen at your discretion and regardless of who volunteers, to look at and study as a…
Turn and Talk is a powerful tool in the classroom. Done well it can cause the room to crackle with energy and give students the opportunity to rehearse and develop ideas in a smaller setting before sharing them with the whole group. Watch, for example, how the energy in these three Turn&Talks (that’s Denarius Frazier, BreOnna…
I’ve spent much of this week watching the first batch of video from school year 2021-22 classrooms. Watching classrooms with everyone masked is a bit disconcerting at first but it’s remarkable how quickly things feel closer to normal. Familiar interactions and relationships don’t take long to seem… well… familiar. And already there’s so much to learn….
Means of Participation is our phrase for a set of consistent procedures that describe clearly to students HOW they should participate in class at any given moment. When the Means of Participation is ambiguous–i.e. left unclear by the teacher–the results are mostly one of the following: Crickets: No one will violate the unspoken code of silence…