Key points
- Cold Call cannot be implemented well in isolation
- Teachers implementing Cold Call must first establish the conditions for it
- Directed questioning relies on all students being engaged in the first place; it is unlikely to work well without several other techniques ticking along nicely
- Prioritise low-stakes, all-student engagement techniques; only after we have high engagement are we well placed to layer Cold Call in
Laying foundations for Cold Call
Many teachers are working hard to implement Cold Call.
Executed well, it’s a thing of beauty, but increasingly I think schools should prioritise implementing a core set of all-student response techniques (e.g. Mini Whiteboards) before tackling Cold Call.
Here’s why I think all-student responses should come first.
No matter how well scripted, Cold Call only works brilliantly in classrooms where there is an abundance of student activity: everyone thinking, everyone writing, everyone underlining the verb, everyone saying the target vocab word together, everyone locating the coordinate.
All-student response routines generate this culture; without these all-in activities, Cold Call is very hard to do well. Teachers are less sure what (and how) students are thinking. Kids can feel caught off guard; they clamber for answers. Lessons lose pace.
In my experience, when Cold Call isn’t working well, teachers abandon the technique. They sense it not landing. They realise it isn’t helping to cause thinking. They note the silences, the pauses, the lack of flow in the lesson. They revert to asking for hands up. This makes total sense to me; great teachers will not press on with a technique that’s getting in the way of learning.
When Cold Call falls flat, the issue is not often with Cold Call per se. The problem is that it’s being implemented in isolation. If we invest in all-student response systems first, we give ourselves a better chance of Cold Calling fulfilling its great potential.
Once we’ve established some core routines for engaging all students’ thinking simultaneously (e.g. Mini Whiteboards or Turn & Talk), we have fertile ground for Cold Calling. It is immediately less effortful. It needn’t be perfect. Students are primed. Teachers have evidence of thinking to work with.
In the room where everyone has had a chance to write, the teacher’s Cold Call immediately sounds different: “Grace, you feverishly wrote 7 common nouns! Fabulous work – let’s start with you sharing one, and then we’ll hear from a few others.” We’re set up for success.
Cold Call pedants will note I’ve committed a cardinal sin in my script just now. I put Grace’s name up front! But it doesn’t matter too much, because I embedded wait/think time in the 20-second Mini Whiteboard task that came before the Cold Call. Now, the exact framing of the Cold Call matters much less.
Wrapping up
School leaders who want to increase the ratio of thinking and participation in classrooms are onto a good thing in Cold Call, but such a difficult technique should not be implemented as if it will work well on its own. It rarely does.
In the next few Implementation Edits, I will explore a range of all-student response techniques, considering the upsides and limitations of each.
Staffroom reflections
- What all-student response techniques are currently part of our everyday classroom routines? Are they established well enough for Cold Call to be layered in?
- How confident are we that students are thinking and participating before we Cold Call? What do we notice in moment when we Cold Call without first establishing high levels of engagement?
- When does Cold Call fall flat? What signs do we look out for to know?
- What might it look like to sequence Cold Call as a second-tier strategy — building it after all-student responses are in place?
