(Part of Chapter 4: Engaging Students in Your Lessons)
"The Vegas is the sparkle, the moment during class when you might observe some production values: music, lights, rhythm, dancing." (p 141). So, Vegas adds some fun to the classroom -- a little whiz-bang. But, the author points out that it isn't whiz-bang just for whiz-bang's sake. Every Vegas activity has a purpose -- it promotes one of the day's learning objectives.
Vegas can include a little drama, a little song, etc. Students can learn that when a certain word is said, they should cheer, or stomp, or some such thing.
Vegas helps students pay attention, participate, and build classroom culture. However, it can get out-of-hand, so the author is quick to point out that the teacher must be able to turn it on (allow it) and turn it off, so that when it is done, it is done.
My response:
I do like to have fun in the classroom whenever possible. But, a lot of the suggestions in the book are better for the elementary school classroom than the college classroom.
However, one of the ideas I have been mulling over is having a little Game Show called "What could go wrong?!", along with a PowerPoint slide that flashes that question, has gaudy flashing background colors, has lightbulbs blinking around the edges, etc. I would use this slide to introduce a short segment where we look at a new structure in a programming language (an if statement, for loop, try/catch, etc.) and come up with ways in which we could make mistakes. I think it could be fun.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Technique 26: Everybody Writes
(Part of Chapter 4: Engaging Students in Your Lessons)
The author tells a story which resonates strongly with me: in a classroom, the teacher is presenting a short story, and then asks the students a demanding question -- a question that really requires the students to think deeply. This is a perfect teaching behavior -- stretching the students to understand, apply, and extend the information they've received. The response from the classroom: a deafening silence and averted eyes.
This is exactly what I get most days in the classroom, and it drives me nuts! The author suggests giving the students time to think and then write down their answers, and then be ready to discuss their answers.
The idea is that better, more insightful answers often require time -- not everyone can come up with a great answer immediately. Also, if you take the first answer, you don't allow the other students to struggle with the problem themselves. The author gives a few other reasons why having students write down answers is a good idea, but the best reason, in my opinion, is "Students remember twice as much of what they are learning if they write it down."
My response:
I like this idea a lot. When I am teaching Intro to Programming classes, and I do Questions and Answers on the assigned reading (ask me if you want to know more about this), the students do get a chance to write their answers -- and they get a chance to think about their answers.
I wonder if I couldn't also give the students a few harder problems to solve (i.e., code snippets to write) before they get to class (but after having read the assigned section in the text).
The author tells a story which resonates strongly with me: in a classroom, the teacher is presenting a short story, and then asks the students a demanding question -- a question that really requires the students to think deeply. This is a perfect teaching behavior -- stretching the students to understand, apply, and extend the information they've received. The response from the classroom: a deafening silence and averted eyes.
This is exactly what I get most days in the classroom, and it drives me nuts! The author suggests giving the students time to think and then write down their answers, and then be ready to discuss their answers.
The idea is that better, more insightful answers often require time -- not everyone can come up with a great answer immediately. Also, if you take the first answer, you don't allow the other students to struggle with the problem themselves. The author gives a few other reasons why having students write down answers is a good idea, but the best reason, in my opinion, is "Students remember twice as much of what they are learning if they write it down."
My response:
I like this idea a lot. When I am teaching Intro to Programming classes, and I do Questions and Answers on the assigned reading (ask me if you want to know more about this), the students do get a chance to write their answers -- and they get a chance to think about their answers.
I wonder if I couldn't also give the students a few harder problems to solve (i.e., code snippets to write) before they get to class (but after having read the assigned section in the text).
Technique 25: Wait Time
(Part of Chapter 4: Engaging Students in Your Lessons)
This is a relatively well-known technique in which the teacher waits a few seconds after asking a question and before taking an answer. Research has shown that if you wait a few seconds before taking an answer, you get richer, better answers, from more students.
You might think this wastes valuable time in the classroom, but the author contends that you may actually save time, as you get high-quality answers earlier.
The author suggests narrating the wait time sometimes. E.g., "I'm waiting for more hands.", or "I'm seeing people thinking deeply and jotting down thoughts. I'll give everyone a few more seconds to do that.", or even "I'll start taking answers in ten seconds."
"The point is that top teachers use their narration of the interim period during their wait time to incent and reinforce the specific behaviors that will be most productive to their students during that time. They are teaching even while they are waiting."
My response:
I like this, and do this quite a bit. It seems to work for me.
This is a relatively well-known technique in which the teacher waits a few seconds after asking a question and before taking an answer. Research has shown that if you wait a few seconds before taking an answer, you get richer, better answers, from more students.
You might think this wastes valuable time in the classroom, but the author contends that you may actually save time, as you get high-quality answers earlier.
The author suggests narrating the wait time sometimes. E.g., "I'm waiting for more hands.", or "I'm seeing people thinking deeply and jotting down thoughts. I'll give everyone a few more seconds to do that.", or even "I'll start taking answers in ten seconds."
"The point is that top teachers use their narration of the interim period during their wait time to incent and reinforce the specific behaviors that will be most productive to their students during that time. They are teaching even while they are waiting."
My response:
I like this, and do this quite a bit. It seems to work for me.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Technique 24: Pepper
(Part of Chapter 4: Engaging Students in Your Lessons)
Pepper is a fun, fast-paced question and answer time. It is good for review of fundamental information -- quick questions with quick, short answers. The teacher can take hands or can use Cold Call.
One fun way to implement it is to use popsicle sticks with students' names on them. Repeatedly, the teacher quickly picks a stick and addresses the question to the student. (The author notes that the teacher can actually steer questions to selected students -- only the teacher can see the name actually written on the stick).
Another fun idea is to start the session out with everyone standing, and then students have to earn their seats by answering a question correctly.
My thoughts:
I haven't used this technique at all. I do like the idea of the popsicle sticks. I think even college students would find that fun. And, it would help me learn students' names near the beginning of the semester.
Pepper is a fun, fast-paced question and answer time. It is good for review of fundamental information -- quick questions with quick, short answers. The teacher can take hands or can use Cold Call.
One fun way to implement it is to use popsicle sticks with students' names on them. Repeatedly, the teacher quickly picks a stick and addresses the question to the student. (The author notes that the teacher can actually steer questions to selected students -- only the teacher can see the name actually written on the stick).
Another fun idea is to start the session out with everyone standing, and then students have to earn their seats by answering a question correctly.
My thoughts:
I haven't used this technique at all. I do like the idea of the popsicle sticks. I think even college students would find that fun. And, it would help me learn students' names near the beginning of the semester.
Technique 23: Call and Response
(Part of Chapter 4: Engaging Students in Your Lessons)
Call and Response simply means that you ask a question of the whole classroom, and they all answer in unison (hopefully). The author says it accomplishes 3 primary goals:
Call and Response simply means that you ask a question of the whole classroom, and they all answer in unison (hopefully). The author says it accomplishes 3 primary goals:
- Academic review and reinforcement. Using this technique allows everyone to participate. It increases At Bats and Ratio. When a student gives a particularly strong answer, having the whole classroom repeat that answer helps to reinforce it.
- It is Fun! It makes the classroom feel like a cheering crowd. It is active and energetic.
- Behavioral reinforcement. It encourages all students to participate. After all, everyone else is doing it... :-)
The author lists 5 types of Call and Response, which I won't explain in detail here. They are Repeat, Report, Reinforce, Review, and Solve. The last type, Solve, is the most interesting to me for the college classroom. It is a question that asks the class to solve a problem. To use it effectively, the question needs to have "a single clear answer, and [there should be] a strong likelihood that all students will know how to solve it." (p 127)
Delivering a Call and Response question requires giving the students a cue as to when they should all respond together. For the college classroom, I think the best choices the author offers are:
- Group Prompt. You simply say "Everyone?" or "Class?" before or after the question. E.g., "What type of value does this expression evaluate to?", slight pause, "Everyone?"
- A Nonverbal Gesture. A point, a hand dropped from shoulder height, a looping motion with the finger.
There is at least one risk in using Cold Call: freeloading. Students can fade into the background by not saying anything when they don't know the answer, while the rest of the class says the answer together.
My response:
I like to use Call and Response occasionally. It sometimes feels a little strange in the college classroom -- perhaps a little too informal. But, I think the students enjoy this informality occasionally. College classrooms tend to be pretty staid, and I think Call and Response livens things up bit.
In every classroom in which I've used this, I've always had freeloaders. So, I limit its use. Or, I combine the Response with some kind of gesture -- one finger up for one answer, two fingers for another. In this way, Call and Response becomes closely related to Take a Stand.
My response:
I like to use Call and Response occasionally. It sometimes feels a little strange in the college classroom -- perhaps a little too informal. But, I think the students enjoy this informality occasionally. College classrooms tend to be pretty staid, and I think Call and Response livens things up bit.
In every classroom in which I've used this, I've always had freeloaders. So, I limit its use. Or, I combine the Response with some kind of gesture -- one finger up for one answer, two fingers for another. In this way, Call and Response becomes closely related to Take a Stand.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Technique 22: Cold Call (perhaps the single most powerful technique in the book)
(Part of Chapter 4: Engaging Students in your Lessons)
This technique means that you reserve the right to call on anyone at any time to answer a question. Thus, all students have to pay attention all the time and be ready to answer a question. This ensures that all students answer all the questions in their minds, although only one has to answer out loud. This technique has a similar effect as Take a Stand.
In Cold Call, you call on students whether or not they have raised their hands. The technique is simple, but perhaps has a subtle difference from what some teachers do. Some teachers might identify a student, and then address the question to her. In Cold Call, you state the question first, and then you ask someone to answer it. Because the students don't know who will be chosen, they all have to have their answer ready.
Cold Call can speed up your teaching because you don't have to wait for someone to raise their hand to answer. It also allows you distribute questions around the room -- in fact, it is essential that this be done. And, it reinforces the fact that this is the teacher's classroom. He is in charge and will pick which students participate.
The author states, "For the reasons I've described above, the single most powerful technique in this book is, I believe, Cold Call."
He goes on to say that Cold Call can be done wrong. To do it right, you must:
This technique means that you reserve the right to call on anyone at any time to answer a question. Thus, all students have to pay attention all the time and be ready to answer a question. This ensures that all students answer all the questions in their minds, although only one has to answer out loud. This technique has a similar effect as Take a Stand.
In Cold Call, you call on students whether or not they have raised their hands. The technique is simple, but perhaps has a subtle difference from what some teachers do. Some teachers might identify a student, and then address the question to her. In Cold Call, you state the question first, and then you ask someone to answer it. Because the students don't know who will be chosen, they all have to have their answer ready.
Cold Call can speed up your teaching because you don't have to wait for someone to raise their hand to answer. It also allows you distribute questions around the room -- in fact, it is essential that this be done. And, it reinforces the fact that this is the teacher's classroom. He is in charge and will pick which students participate.
The author states, "For the reasons I've described above, the single most powerful technique in this book is, I believe, Cold Call."
He goes on to say that Cold Call can be done wrong. To do it right, you must:
- Be predictable. You don't want to occasionally use it to wake students up -- i.e., you don't want to use it as a discipline strategy. If you use it consistently, then students know they have to be ready at all time.
- Use it systematically. Use Cold Call to set expectations, not to single out individuals. Spend a minimum of time choosing which student to call upon. Otherwise, it appears you are picking on individuals. Also, make sure you call on all individuals. Don't call on students based on ability, or location in the classroom, or some other sub-grouping. Anyone should be eligible to be called upon at any time.
- Be positive. Use Cold Call to show students that they can grasp this material, and that their participation in this community is important. Don't use Cold Call as a "gotcha", to bring students back to the fold when their minds have wandered.
- Make your questions clear. Asking ill-formed questions does not allow for a positive experience for the student. Instead, the student will be confused and may feel like they are dumb or inferior (when, in actuality, most of the student probably didn't know what was being asked for).
- Make your questions scaffolded. That is, start with easy questions, and then gradually build up to harder ones. Or, start with multiple easy questions, and then use the answers to build a harder question. "Starting simple doesn't mean ending that way, but it does tend to engage and motivate kids and cause students to be inspired by the building level of rigor and challenge." (p 118).
To demonstrate the value of your students' participation, you can use these techniques:
- Follow-on to a previous question. Ask a simple question, and then a harder one, to the same student.
- Follow-on to another student's comment. Ask another student the next harder question.
- Follow-on later to a student's own answer. After building on an answer, come back to an earlier student to see if the answer to an easier question still holds.
The author goes on to propose these variations on the Cold Call theme:
- At some point, you can tell the class to not put their hands up to answer a question. Instead, you'll be doing pure Cold Calling -- i.e., asking questions around the classroom "randomly".
- Occasionally, it may be useful to tell a student beforehand that they are going to get the next question. This is useful if the student has language difficulties, is especially shy, etc.
- Mix with Call and Response (coming to a blog post soon): in Call and Response, instead of Cold Calling an individual, you "Cold Call" the entire class. So, you say, "What is 9 times 7?", Pause, "Class?". And then the whole class responds together.
My Response:
I believe Cold Call generally works well in the (small) college classroom. It does require the professor to learn the students' names, but that is always a good thing. For me in Computer Science, it is useful as it gives the professor an opportunity to get many repetitions in -- i.e., to increase the number of At Bats -- and repetition is crucial for learning how to program, in my opinion.
In my Intro Programming classrooms, the students get so used to Cold Call that they rarely put their hands up. That is fine with me, in general, although I do occasionally ask the class, "Who has an answer they believe is correct?". This does slow down the pace of the teaching, but I still think it is a good way to mix things up a bit. I also use the Call and Response technique to mix things up. As it is so similar to Cold Call, I think the students don't even realize that it is a different technique.
Cold Call works extremely well with my general pedagogical philosophy of Formative (or Diagnostic) Assessment. It helps me assess how well the class is understanding concepts -- not only by how often they get the answer correct, but also by how quickly they get the answer correct.
Things I've done wrong:
- I've too often used it as a "gotcha": Ha! I caught you tuning out! That'll larn ya! This is not good.
- Sometimes my questions are too vague. In the college classroom we are learning not just facts, but concepts. This happens in middle/high school, too, but it is emphasized even more in college. I find it difficult to ask clear questions about concepts, not just facts.
Introduction to Chapter 4, "Engaging Students in Your Lesson"
The author, Doug Lemov, states "Great teachers engage students so that they feel like part of the lesson." And then he goes on: "students need to be engaged in not just the class but in the work of class. This is, you could easily engage students in class by substituting frills for substance. The techniques reviewed in this chapter will consistently draw students into the work of class."
Technique 21: Take a Stand
(Part of Chapter 3: Structuring and Delivering Your Lessons)
This technique asks students to make a judgment about the correctness of an answer given by another student. It is a technique for keeping students more engaged, even when only one student has been asked to give an answer for a problem. It is a way to increase your Ratio.
You can ask an individual student if he/she agrees with the answer, or you can ask the whole class. This second option can be done effectively by asking the students to raise their hands and put up 1 finger if they agree, or 2 if they disagree (or thumbs up, thumbs down).
Take a Stand keeps all students involved even when a question is directed toward a single student -- they suspect that they will be asked to agree or disagree with the answer. If they get their response wrong, they may be asked to justify their position. It allows a teacher to effectively ask all questions to all students every time.
Important things to remember:
This technique asks students to make a judgment about the correctness of an answer given by another student. It is a technique for keeping students more engaged, even when only one student has been asked to give an answer for a problem. It is a way to increase your Ratio.
You can ask an individual student if he/she agrees with the answer, or you can ask the whole class. This second option can be done effectively by asking the students to raise their hands and put up 1 finger if they agree, or 2 if they disagree (or thumbs up, thumbs down).
Take a Stand keeps all students involved even when a question is directed toward a single student -- they suspect that they will be asked to agree or disagree with the answer. If they get their response wrong, they may be asked to justify their position. It allows a teacher to effectively ask all questions to all students every time.
Important things to remember:
- follow up on students' answers, so that if students respond wrong, they can learn why their answer is wrong.
- use the technique often, so that students learn to pay attention all the time.
- ask students to Take a Stand both when the original answer is correct or incorrect
- when a small group of students disagrees with the rest of the class, acknowledge their courage.
My response:
I have used this technique pretty effectively in recent semesters. It works, IMO. One thing to remember is to not allow students to take no stand. For example, sometimes I ask students to nod if they agree or shake their head if they disagree. The result is that some students do neither. It is better to have them all raise their hands to give a thumbs up/down, so that they have to take a stand.
Technique 20: Exit Ticket
(Part of Chapter 3: Structuring and Delivering Your Lessons)
End each class with one more At Bat -- an Exit Ticket that checks to see if the students mastered the lesson of the day. These exit tickets are: 1) quick: one to three questions, 2) turned in, so that you can see if they got it that day, 3) designed to yield data. "This means the questions are fairly simple and focus on one key part of the objective." (p. 106)
My response:
This is a standard method of Formative Assessment, as I understand it. It allows a teacher to assess quickly his/her own effectiveness, and alter his/her teaching to ensure that students are making consistent progress. Using clickers or some other on-line tool (Google forms or ClassQue) would make it easy to see quickly how many students mastered the material, and which ones struggled and in which ways.) I really need to do this.
End each class with one more At Bat -- an Exit Ticket that checks to see if the students mastered the lesson of the day. These exit tickets are: 1) quick: one to three questions, 2) turned in, so that you can see if they got it that day, 3) designed to yield data. "This means the questions are fairly simple and focus on one key part of the objective." (p. 106)
My response:
This is a standard method of Formative Assessment, as I understand it. It allows a teacher to assess quickly his/her own effectiveness, and alter his/her teaching to ensure that students are making consistent progress. Using clickers or some other on-line tool (Google forms or ClassQue) would make it easy to see quickly how many students mastered the material, and which ones struggled and in which ways.) I really need to do this.
Technique 19: At Bats
(Part of Chapter 3: Structuring and Delivering Your Lessons)
This one is easy to summarize: repetition, repetition, repetition. To refine a skill, you must do it often, so that it becomes almost natural. So, you teach the students how to do something, and then you give them plenty of practice. The author says "they need lots and lots of practice: ten or twenty repetitions instead of two or three."
Key points to remember:
This one is easy to summarize: repetition, repetition, repetition. To refine a skill, you must do it often, so that it becomes almost natural. So, you teach the students how to do something, and then you give them plenty of practice. The author says "they need lots and lots of practice: ten or twenty repetitions instead of two or three."
Key points to remember:
- Go until they can do it on their own.
- Use multiple variations and formats
- Grab opportunities for enrichment and differentiation. I.e., be sure to have bonus problems ready so that stronger students can be pushed to the next level.
My response:
Yes! Yes! Yes! (notice the repetition there :-) In teaching students how to program, repetition is key. Students have to be able to write for loops, define new classes, make functions, etc., without even thinking. The only way to do this is to give them plenty of practice.
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