On cold calling

Making it work in secondary school

Cold calling = warm classrooms. Photo by vahid kanani on Unsplash

Researchers have found the evidence I need to support my bold claim that cold calling (and variations thereof) is one of the keys to equity in the classroom. They’ve found that cold calling also increases the incidence of voluntary contributions. This has certainly been my experience. I work in a girls’ school and it’s interesting that the research showed that with cold calling, the contributions of women increased more than men.

I realise this research didn’t take place in a secondary school. Anecdotally, plenty of teachers will attest to the power of cold calling, but secondary schools have been slow on the uptake. Colleagues in tertiary education have reported that cold calling was new to their preservice teacher students, evident in their initial discomfort at being called upon, even in an adult learning setting. A few months back, I delivered a large workshop with content designed by Dr. Nathaniel Swain on TAPPLE in secondary school. The number one obstacle that participants brought up was student anxiety—on LinkedIn, the discourse is about neurodiversity.

So this post is to give a few hot tips, for what they’re worth, that have worked for me with my classes. Cold calling isn’t the cold-hearted, insensitive practice that many think it is. It’s a way of achieving equitable participation and learning. For those concerned about the discomfort of students with a disability, I encourage you to consider this: if a student has a learning plan that rules out participation, is it acceptable that we receive far less in-class formative assessment from that student? Is it acceptable that we have far fewer indicators of whether any cognitive work is being done by that student? When people talk about exclusion, this is where my mind goes.

Tips for cold calling

1. Don’t try it on Day 1 of Term 1 with a new class. Be cautious on placement as a pre-service teacher. Building a culture of safety takes time—about half a term in my experience.

2. Do explain to your students that you’re trying ‘no hands up.’ I explain that ‘no hands up’ allows me to see and hear if they have learned what I hope they have learned. If they haven’t, that’s usually on me, not them.

3. I also allow students to have occasional bad days. I just ask that they give me a discreet warning. Most ‘bad days’ involve students gingerly re-entering the discussion as they warm up during the course of the lesson, but there’s no requirement.

4. Remember, with the principles of TAPPLE, or even Questioning the Author, you shouldn’t be asking students anything they—in theory—can’t answer. Of course, if nobody can answer or you don’t have your 80% success rate, you should reteach.

5. If you’re in the safety-building stage, try using pair shares. At worst, students can steal someone else’s answer while you’re building up a positive culture.

6. Respond to mistakes neutrally by correcting students. You can try reframing the question, but sometimes this draws undue attention to an incorrect answer. Asking ‘What makes you say that?’ gives great feedback on your teaching and insight into common misunderstandings. It’s a nice way of correcting answers but still acknowledging how the student got there, in other words a culture of thinking.

7. Ask a question, then give what feels like exaggerated wait time, and only name the targeted student after that wait time. Try no opt-out when you have mastered the basics of cold calling.

8. If you have a student with a learning plan prohibiting them from speaking, talk to learning support about whether they will endorse you trying some alternative strategies. One that I lean heavily on is to circulate the room during pair shares listening for gold. If one of my neurodiverse students has something great—or even just correct—to say, I ask them discreetly if they would be willing to contribute. With this much warning and an affirmation of their answer from me, they usually do. The best part of this is that the whole class sees and hears that student contributing, giving me psychological safety brownie points to cash in with the whole class.

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   I would never claim that every class or school is the same, but this strategy can transform participation. It’s the solution, not the problem. I wonder if COVID-19 and rising student anxiety has made the adults more anxious in their class interactions. We can’t expect to build student social capacity and resilience with permanent opt-outs. I hope more teachers give this a go. Let’s normalise participation again.