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:

• 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.