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Lessons Learnt from lockdown Teaching

As lockdown eased I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to teach Year 12 for 3 full days. The classroom was prepared for 'socially distanced' learning and I carefully planned every minute of the day wanting to ensure they had a positive experience in the midst of so much uncertainty. 

The one thing I hadn't thought about was how social distancing would make class questioning so different from before! I have always been an avid user of 'think, pair, share' and using that time when the students are discussing provides an invaluable opportunity to circulate the room, listen in to their conversations before taking student's responses. I found myself feeling trapped behind my desk, asking a question and just taking an answer straight away from anyone that volunteered themselves - which, let's be honest, is always the same exceptional student... So I went away thinking I had to change something the next week.

I found myself reaching for the classic 'Teach like a Champion 2.0' and found reading about 'Cold Call' a really useful reminder on some key tips to try.

Cold Call: Call on students regardless of whether they've raised their hands.

Reading this sentence alone brings back (painful) memories of observing teachers using this strategy literally as it reads... 

Teacher: Sally, can you tell me how to calculate the gradient of this graph?

Sally: (looking like a rabbit in the headlights) Err, umm

Teacher: I will take that as a no then... 

Sally is left feeling lost and avoids all further eye-contact in the hope that she is never called upon again.

In his book, Doug expands on this statement in 4 different ways and one that I found useful with my Year 12 class was to 'Unbundle the Cold Call'. This helped to maximise student participation as I broke up larger questions into a series of smaller questions that had contingent answers and allowed me to distribute the questions to different students.

I explained to my students the challenge I found with class questioning the week before and that I was going to be using 'no hands up Cold Calling'. Whilst I was 'Cold Calling', I have to admit I used my knowledge of the students ability to select who was answering which build up question. So I guess how I interpreted this strategy was my way of facilitating that 'think, pair, share' on a whole class level - perhaps I can call it 'think, question, cold call'... 

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