Sitting in the back of the room, I observed Shelly, my
student-teacher run a class discussion. I was impressed with her technique. It
seemed the whole class was fired up and engaged. This was in huge contrast to
what I’d seen her do much earlier in her student teaching.
She was using 4 essential techniques that nurture student
participation.
1. Engagement Language
2. Pyramid questioning
3. Level of concern
4. Wait time
Let’s look at the wrong and right of each of these. This article is only about Engagement Language. Look for future posts on the other three techniques.
Engagement Language
When Shelly first started, she would often say something
like this after presenting information; “Would anyone like to comment on this?”
Or “Anyone think they know what might happen next?”
The nature of her language allowed students to avoid
engaging in the lesson. After all, she said “does anyone . . .” To my
daydreamers, that meant someone else will answer. Surely that smart girl in the
first row will say something.
Shelly’s language also expressed a lack of confidence that
her students would be able to respond. “Does anyone . . .” means she wonders if
it’s possible for her students to answer. All her timid students will keep
their mouths shut since their teacher doesn’t think they would know the answer.
Today she was saying things like, “Ok, we saw what happened
with A and B. I want you to raise your hand when you have an idea of what might
happen with C.” Then she would wait. She waited with her hand in the air to
show students she expected students to raise their hand when they had prepared
an answer. Her expectant smile showed she had confidence in their ability to
answer her question.
She also used the words, “I want you to . . .” Students are
hardwired to care about what their teacher wants. Teachers are accessing deep
parts of students’ brains when they say things like, I want you to . . ., I need you to . . ., It makes me feel happy when
you . . ., I’m disappointed you choose to do that, and so forth. Shelly showed me she
understood this when I would often hear her explain to students what she wanted
them to do and feel.
Going back to Shelly’s question about what happened with A,
B and C, after Shelly asked the class the question, she noticed that only half
the class had their hands up. To Shelly, this meant they either lacked the
information to answer, or the confidence to raise their hands. Before calling
on anyone, Shelly knew she had to either 1) provide more information so
everyone could prepare an answer, or 2) give some confidence to the students
who were unsure.
Shelly dealt with the situation by telling students to find
out what their neighbors were thinking, giving them enough time to share, then
repeating her call: “Raise your hand when you think you know the answer.” This
was followed by enough wait time to make sure everyone had their hand up.
Students expected that Shelly would wait until their hand was up, so students
without a solid answer were genuinely curious about what their more confident
classmates were thinking.
Shelly, like most teachers, would need about three years of
teaching before she could use all her techniques intuitively, but she had the most important element of
classroom management solidly fixed: aim for 100% engagement when presenting
information, and this meant she should use language which nurtures student participation. I’m sure no
student will be daydreaming when Shelly’s teaching.
