You’ve done your part. You have presented the material, laid the groundwork, and given the possible arguments while your students listened with rapt attention. The air is ripe with anticipation. Your teaching senses tingle. It is time to ask a well-phrased question that will demonstrate that your students fully understand and are ready to take their learning to the next level.
How often have I been at this critical moment in my career, only to have my hopes dashed?
Scenario 1: The “Hermione Granger” student shoots up her hand with other students looking on. Or worse, in her excitement, she blurts out the answer or idea before the other students even had time to digest the question.
Scenario 2: The “extroverted risk-taker” offers his opinion. Not that the answer is necessarily correct, but he has been rewarded over the years for his willingness to contribute to the class discussion, if for nothing else than breaking the dreaded silence.
Scenario 3: The entire class reverts to the “predator-prey model” or “T-rex strategy,” as Dr. May Mei calls it. The students (the prey) know that if they sit still and avoid eye contact, the professor (the predator) will overlook them and move to the next victim.
Of course, there are variations, but the three options presented cover a large swath of what I’ve experienced in the classroom. I adopted a partner strategy to battle this, where students must explain their answers to their partners. To make sure everyone has a partner, I pair students together every three weeks, and they must sit with their partners during class.
Practitioners may recognize this process as think-pair-share: pose a question, let students think independently about the question, next discuss their ideas with their partner, then share with the whole class. As I have been known to mess these up, let’s take each in turn.
Think
After posing the question, I often forget to provide time for the thinking part and jump straight to the “tell your neighbor” part in my own Hermione-like excitement. Then instead of single option 1, 2, or 3 for the whole class, I have paired versions throughout the whole class. My Hermiones quickly tell their neighbor the answer, my extroverted risk-takers start pontificating, and my scenario-three pairs stare at their notes, avoiding eye contact with the partner next to them.
In these instances, silence is vital. After posing the question, or better yet, written on board or projected, give students time to think. To help make this time productive, tell students how long they have and have them write something down. For something quick, “take 30 seconds to write the solution, idea, etc. for blah.” For something longer, “let’s take two minutes to write down as many things we can recall about blah.”
Pair:
Now the tricky part. How do you know the pairs are sharing equitably? Well, often you don’t. One of the ways I combat this is with pairings that last three weeks. If a particular pair is not equitable, this may slip my gaze in the first class or two. But over three weeks of circulating the classroom as pairs discuss, I develop a better sense of how various pairs interact and can nudge accordingly.
Sometimes, student A legitimately knows more than student B. That’s fine. Student A needs to explain things in a way that student B understands. And student B must question if they do not grasp what A is saying.
Share:
How can I make sure the pairing went well? I call on a student to share their partner’s answer and whether they agree or disagree. In this instance, I would call on student B to share student A’s explanation. If student A did their job, student B should be able to share A’s key points successfully.
But which group to call on? Again, I am not very good at this and am probably biased. I know some colleagues roll a die. The website “rolladie.net” allows you to choose from 4-,6-,8-,10-,12-, or 20-sided dies. Have 18 students, or nine pairs? Dr. Sarah Wolffe would roll a 10-sided die with pairs numbered 1-9. If she rolls a 10, she answers the question!
Of course, there are variations on the think-pair-share theme. If you do not want to bother with pairs, consider warm calling, as explained by Dr. Floyd Cheung.
By contrast, cold calling is when the professor asks a question to a student at random, and without warning, to answer. Hot calling is when the professor calls on the student who raises their hand first, as Hermione Granger does routinely at Hogwarts.
Warm calling requires the professor to give everyone the opportunity to think after asking a question. We might give students a chance to write for a minute, or we might give them a moment to consider their thoughts on their own before turning to a classmate to exchange ideas. This is their warm-up. Then, the professor must call on random students to speak. Usually, I ask at least two students from different parts of the classroom to start, and I let the warm conversation heat up by inviting students to raise their hands to offer their thoughts.
In either case, this approach forces us to embrace that nerve-wracking silence. We may feel like precious learning moments are ticking by, but students need time to collect and focus their thoughts. Cognitive psychologists will argue that students will often learn more in two minutes of silent struggle on a topic than in listening to someone lecture on that topic for the same amount.
Upside:
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More students are engaged with the material
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The partner grouping can help build class community
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Students find warm calling more equitable
Downside:
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That soul-crushing silence
Still learning from my misstakes mistakes…