Teach like a champion 3.0: 63 techniques that put students on the path to college - Lemov Doug 2021

Technique 16: Right is right
Academic ethos

In almost every lesson, there comes a moment when a student's answer is similar to what you hoped you'd get (or, even better, to the exemplar you wrote when preparing your lesson), but something is still missing. The gist is there, or a kernel of the insight, but it's also not a response that fully answers the question or completely captures the key idea. It's not a mistake, it's just not all the way complete.

What happens next? How do we validate a student's contribution while continuing to push for deeper and more precise thinking?

If we struggle in this moment, it may be in part because of our best intentions. We want to encourage students or we want to keep the class engaged or we need to make sure we get to the Exit Ticket before the bell rings, so we say “right” or “good” or “yes” to that almost-there response. However, there are real risks to calling “right” that which is not truly and completely right. Students look to their teachers as arbiters of quality. They rely on us to communicate with honesty and objectivity, using our expertise to evaluate whether responses have answered a question fully and well, so that they may better understand their own progress in learning. If we are not fully honest when we say, “Yes, you have done work of merit,” we not only misinform them but sow seeds that eventually erode that essential trust.

Right Is Right is about how to respond in the way that's most beneficial to students when an answer is almost right—pretty good, but not 100 percent.

Although it seems obvious that we should set a high standard, we often drop our standards unintentionally. Consider a common teacher habit that I refer to as “rounding up.” Rounding up involves a teacher responding to a partially or nearly correct answer by affirming it and in so doing, adding critical detail (perhaps the most insightful or challenging detail) to make the answer fully correct. Imagine, for example, a student who's asked at the beginning of Romeo and Juliet how the Capulets and Montagues get along. “They don't like each other,” the student might say, in an answer that most teachers would, I hope, consider to be not fully correct—the gist, perhaps, but none of the detail and specificity that indicate a quality understanding. “Right,” the teacher might reply. “They don't like each other, and they have been feuding for generations.”

Did you catch the rounding up? The student hadn't included “and they have been feuding for generations.” That was the teacher's work, though she gave the student credit for it.

Sometimes a teacher will be even more explicit in giving a student credit for the rounding up, as in “Right, what Kiley said was that they don't like each other and have been feuding. Good work, Kiley.” Either way, the teacher has set a low standard for depth and accuracy. The student who answered may think, “Good, I did it,” when in fact she didn't. Moreover the teacher has crowded out Kiley's own thinking by doing cognitive work that she could—and should—do herself. She has eliminated the opportunity for Kiley to recognize the gap between what she said and what would have constituted a top-quality answer.

Over time, persistent rounding up may cause students to internalize a low standard—they may believe they're prepared and ready to succeed when, in fact, they're not. The story of the American high school, TNTP's Opportunity Myth tells us, is an overwhelming number of students believing they've done everything right and still not being prepared to succeed in college. Resisting this kind of subtle erosion of expectations is part of our responsibility to students.

Another, possibly more likely outcome of persistent rounding up is an erosion of trust in and respect for the teacher. Students are highly attuned to moments of inauthenticity in the classroom. Rather than feeling the boost of confidence her teacher might have hoped for, Kiley might be thinking, “That's not what I said … Was she actually listening to me?” Perhaps she thinks it's funny and she laughs. Or perhaps she thinks I didn't say any of that, and she starts to suspect that her teacher will accept the bare minimum from her. As Adam Smith points out in Theory of Moral Sentiments, “It is only the most … superficial of mankind who can be much delighted with that praise that they themselves know to be … unmerited.”

Is “in the ballpark” good enough for Kiley? For all students? Rather than giving students the chance to persevere through a challenge or marshal additional cognitive resources, the teacher takes over and, in so doing, may actually (and paradoxically) signal a lack of confidence in Kiley's abilities. As Peps Mccrea writes in his study of the science of motivation, “Success is not about making things easier for pupils. It is about helping them to do something they couldn't do before.” Perversely, rounding up devalues students' voices and insights, denying them that chance. False attributions of quality “only serve to undermine motivation and erode trust.”

Fortunately, a few specific actions can make it easier to consistently help students arrive at academically rigorous answers. Of course, in talking about right answers, I also acknowledge that there are questions for which there is no right answer. Every teacher asks questions that are open to interpretation or require nuance, but even in such cases, there remains a standard for what constitutes a complete, high-quality response. That standard too requires our daily attention and self-discipline.

Holding Out for All-the-Way Right

The most basic form of Right Is Right, holding out for all-the-way right, means using phrases that cause students to elaborate on and add to their initial thinking and so come to recognize what fully correct looks like—the opposite of rounding up. A teacher might use one of the following phrases in response to Kiley's answer about Romeo and Juliet:

· “True. They don't like each other. But can you observe a bit more about their relationship?”

· “Good start, Kiley. Can you develop your answer?”

· “Can you elaborate on what you mean by ’don't like each other,’ Kiley?”

· “Thanks for starting us off, Kiley. Can you talk about the word Shakespeare uses to describe their relationship [that is, feud]?”

· “OK. Kiley said the Capulets and Montagues don't like each other. Can we put some more precise language to the task here?”

· “Thanks, Kiley. When you say they don't like each other, is that how they'd describe it?”

· “Thanks for kicking off our discussion, Kiley. Can you point us to some language in the Prologue that can help us get more specific?”

In holding out for all-the-way right, you set the expectation that ideas matter, that you care about the difference between the facile and the scholarly, and that you believe your students are capable of the latter. This faith in your students' ability sends a message that will guide students long after they've left your classroom. They will have been pushed and know they can do it if they push themselves.

There are two excellent examples of holding out for all-the-way right answers in the video Akilah Bond: Keystone. As students strive to figure out why Cam is helping Eric in the Cam Jansen story they are reading, Cheyenne gives a strong answer that includes one of two possible reasons. At about 2:00 in the video Akilah says (with students chiming in): “Nice work, Cheyenne,” and praises her for having talked about both characters. She's reinforced her effort. But then she adds, “There is something else we know about both characters that makes me think there's another reason Cam is helping Eric.” There's positive reinforcement for Cheyenne and also clarity about the fact that they've not yet arrived at a fully correct answer and Kimayah weighs in to add the critical detail.

Later Akilah asks Sonoa to explain why Eric asks Cam a question. Sonoa's response is good, but afterwards, Akilah notes, “We’re missing something from Sonoa's response. What are we missing?” she asks, and by not accepting an almost-right answer or not crowding out student thinking by rounding up herself, she allows Michael to do the work (and, as you'll notice, be the hero).

A word about tone. Holding out for high standards does not imply being harsh or punitive—in fact, the opposite is true. As you read the responses to replace rounding up above, I hope you imagined a teacher smiling gently, nodding to encourage her students, and/or speaking in a supportive tone. “Personal warmth combined with active demandingness,” Zaretta Hammond writes in Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, “earns the teacher the right to push for excellence and stretch the student beyond his comfort zone.” Students must feel that you believe in their ability to produce ideas of depth and quality, and when this is the case it yields a happy irony: Using Right Is Right demonstrates that you value the student as much as the answer. The goal isn't simply to get the right answer spoken aloud (by someone), but to help each student push their answer to the level of precision and accuracy you believe them capable of, and in so doing to believe themselves capable of excellence.

You can see that dynamic—personal warmth and high expectations for the quality and correctness of answers combining to express an ardent belief in what a student is capable of—in the video Emily Badillo: Traitor, which shows Emily's fourth-grade classroom at Excellence Girls Charter School in Brooklyn. After a student, Chassity, offers a convoluted (if earnest) response to her initial question, Emily explains with patience and emotional constancy what the question was asking and offers Chassity a moment to get her thoughts together. Chassity, perhaps feeling Emily's belief in her, does not give up and her hand is soon back in the air. Emily does not forget her. “Back to you, Chas,” she says lovingly, but again Chassity struggles. There's lots of thinking there, but not yet a right answer. “Eyes here,” Emily instructs the class, drawing attention away from Chassity for a moment to ease any tension she might feel. She then explains what the question is asking for, making the presumption that if Chassity is unclear, others in the room are likely to be as well. She wants a description of the change from one opinion to another among the soldiers. This time she gets an excellent answer from a classmate, but Emily still wants Chassity to get it right. And she wants Chassity to believe she can get it right. So she goes back to her. Chassity again struggles to focus on the question, so Emily steps in, again with warmth and care, to help her focus on the question as she begins framing her response with a sentence starter.

At this point Chassity's answer is dramatically improved. That's the good news. But it's still not right. And Emily thinks Chassity can get all the way there. So where most teachers would pull the ripcord and says “Great work, Chassity,” or round up and say, “What Chassity means is…,” Emily tells her, “You are so close. Add in your … keyword about the soldier's perspective. At first, what?” and now, at last, Chassity nails it. And when her classmates celebrate with her, she knows her accomplishment is real and that she has done something of merit. When Emily says Chassity's work is good, Chassity knows it's good. Recall what we've learned from Peps Mccrea: “Success … is about helping [students] do what they could not do before.” When that happens, he observes, their motivation increases.

It's important to note that it can take quite a bit of time, as we see in this clip, to help a student get from “not quite” to “nailed it.” In this case, Emily knew it was worth investing the whole class's time (as opposed to privately intervening with Chassity at another time) because Chassity's thinking was going to form the thesis of the essay every student was about to draft. They all benefited, culturally and academically, from Emily's investment in their peer.

The Power of Scripting “Right”

Many factors account for why we sometimes don't hold out for all-the-way right answers. There's a time investment in pushing students to find the rest of the answer instead of simply providing it yourself, and we're always under pressure for time. “OK,” we think, “I have ten minutes left, and I just might make it through everything I planned,” and then we get an answer that's almost what we wanted. It's easy to jump at the quick fix. Another reason is that we want to be encouraging. It is the first time you can recall ever seeing Linda raise her hand. Her answer isn't perfect, but you want to be positive, make her feel successful, and encourage her to raise her hand again. So you avoid any implication of “not good enough.”

It turns out that preparation is one of the keys to keeping standards high. If we haven't clearly defined what a high-quality answer will include beforehand, it's hard to hold out. If you're not sure of exactly what a great answer should contain, you won't be able to hold students to an exacting standard. Therefore, Exemplar Planning (technique 1) can help you do some of the “Is that good enough?” and “Is that all-the-way right?” thinking in advance. Of course this doesn't mean you can't override your initial model answer when you're surprised by an unexpected insight from a student; it just means you've started with a more concrete sense of the end goal, particularly for the most critical questions.

Keeping “Almost There” Phrases in Your Back Pocket

A final reason why we sometimes accept answers that are less than fully correct is that we are not neutral observers of our own lessons. At the end of the day, we evaluate ourselves as teachers based in large part on how much we think our students learned. It's not just our students we're assessing but also ourselves, and we have a vested interest in telling ourselves that our students were successful. In a sense, if we give students credit for a correct answer, we give ourselves credit too. The phrase “I know what she was trying to say,” which is sometimes heard among teachers, acknowledges the problem; the unsaid second part of the sentence is, “but she didn't actually say it.” A lifetime of caring about students, of wanting to believe in them, and wanting to believe we've served them well puts us at risk of giving full credit for partial answers and pits us against some of our strongest impulses as educators.

Getting the most out of Right Is Right often means crafting two-part phrases that capture how we feel about our students' effort on one hand and how correct their answer was on the other. This makes it easier to be honest about both—that you like what they've done so far and that they're closing in on the right answer, that you think they know more than they said but that there's still some work to be done or that you want them to push themselves to be even more precise with their words.

Take, for example, a scene from Lauren Harris Vance's class some years ago at Roxbury Prep Charter School in Boston. Lauren asked a student for the slope of a line. The actual slope was negative four-fifths, but the student gave the slope as four-fifths. Where another teacher might have said, “Right, except you need a negative sign,” Lauren said, “Hmm. I like most of that”—expressing in five short words both “You did some good work” and “You're still not all the way there, but I know you can close that gap.” The positivity, honesty, and simplicity of Lauren's response provides a road map for Right Is Right responses. To be effective with Right Is Right, reply to “almost right” answers in a way that is appreciative and often upbeat about what's been accomplished.

It's worthwhile to come up with a few commonly used phrases of your own—planned ways of saying just what you want in common situations. Keep them at the ready—in your back pocket, so to speak. Once you've come up with two or three phrases, use them to simply and consistently enforce Right Is Right and make rigorous answers a habit for your students.

Your phrases should:

· Show appreciation for good work that's been done.

· Be clear and honest about the fact that more work is needed.

· Be fast enough in the delivery to allow you and the student to quickly get back to the thinking.

· Be simple and familiar enough that you can use them with near-automaticity.

Finally, it's important—and often difficult—to remember that Right Is Right is a technique you use when an answer is mostly right rather than when it's just plain wrong. When you encounter a fully wrong answer, you'll want to use more of the techniques described in No Opt Out. Affirming a fully wrong answer as partially correct may only lead to additional confusion (and potentially consume more class time).

Beyond Holding Out: More Versions of Right Is Right

Imagine a typical student in your classroom. You've called on her to explain Shakespeare's use of light and dark imagery in Romeo and Juliet, and she gamely gives it her best shot. While she's done the reading, you can tell as she begins her response that she's not exactly sure where she's going (and might be hoping to find her way onto more solid ground as she shares). Eager to please, this student may inadvertently reach into a bag of tricks many well-intentioned students before her have discovered. They include:

· The Kitchen Sink: Sometimes students who are confused or unsure will simply start talking and say everything they can think of about the topic. The right answer might be in there somewhere, but so is a lot of other stuff and it's not at all clear that they know which is wheat and which is chaff. We should recognize that such “kitchen sink” answers require us to ask students to narrow in on the most important ideas. “Let me pause you for a second because you've said a lot there. Which part of what you said best answers the question?”

· Bait and Switch: Students may at times choose to answer the question they wished they'd been asked instead of the one they were asked. This could be because they misunderstood what you were specifically asking or because they understood one aspect of the text or question better than another and want to keep the discussion in “safe” territory. Thus students often need reminders to answer the actual question. “Yes, she's an inspiring hero. But just to bring us back a bit, the question was about how we'd characterize her relationship to her sister.”

· Heartfelt Topic: Students may feel more comfortable sharing personal opinions, anecdotes, and affective responses because these opinions and observations are low-risk ways to engage with challenging material (and are unlikely to feel like “wrong” answers). And it's easy as a teacher to want to reinforce and respond to stories that start “something this made me think of that happened to me once was …” Sometimes the best response is to say, “Love that you're making connections, but for now let's stay focused on the question at hand… . ”

· Vague Vagaries: Students who are hazy on the details might respond in vague language, relying on pronouns or abstractions instead of names and concrete details. Rather than assuming we know (and the class knows) what they mean, we can push for precision, ensuring that we're all on the same page while helping students practice specificity in their language. We might say, “When you say “she gave it to her,” just tell us who ’she’ is and who is the ’her’ that she gave it to.”

To see Right Is Right in action, look at the video of Jennie Saliba's Year Five (fourth-grade) class at Great Yarmouth Academy in Great Yarmouth, England, where students are reading a nonfiction text on factory workers' lives in Dickensian England. “What made life in the workhouse so tough, Alf?” she asks. Alf, eager to demonstrate his comprehension but perhaps not as focused on the precision of his answer as he might be, offers: “What made life in the workhouse so tough was the jobs, and that many people had … they were too young, too old, too ill to work, and also many people had to work.” Though his answer isn't wrong, it's imprecise and unclear. He has included several ideas, commingled, and Jennie can’t be sure if he knows clearly. “You gave me three or four answers there in one,” she responds with emotional constancy. “Just give me your first answer again, please.” Given the chance to revise his answer, Alf shows a more precise understanding of the text. “What made life so tough in the workhouses was that . . . some jobs were very physically demanding,” Jennie seizes this moment not only to appreciate Alf's answer, but to show him (and the rest of the class) how his increased precision improved the quality of his response. “In your first [answer] you gave me four bits of quite vague information. In that one, you perfected it with … the words you chose.” Jennie has both given Alf a chance to shine and moved the class toward a more specific understanding of the text—and how to respond with clarity.

There are other reasons why students sometimes answer a question other than the one you asked. For example, they sometimes conflate different types of information about a topic. For example, you ask for a definition (“Who can tell me what a compound word is?”), and a student replies with an example (“Eyeball is a compound word!”); or you ask for the description of a concept (“When we refer to the area of a figure, what are we talking about? Who can tell me what area is?”), and a student replies with a formula to solve for it (“Length times width”). In the thick of the action, it's easy to miss that these are right answers to the wrong question. And as you begin to listen for them, you'll find that these kinds of exchanges are far more common than you might expect. If you ask students for a definition and get an example, try saying, “Kim, great example, but we need a definition.” After all, knowing the difference between an example and a definition matters and students need authentic opportunities to practice responding accurately to each type of question.

When student responses are vague, you can respond with a slightly different approach—asking for technical vocabulary or precise language. A student might indeed answer your question, but answer it like a horoscope—in such generalities that the answer could apply to any person or situation. Whereas good teachers get students to develop effective right answers using terms they are already comfortable with (“Volume is the amount of space something takes up”), great teachers get them to use precise technical vocabulary they're developing comfort with (“Volume refers to the cubic units of space an object occupies”). This response expands student vocabularies and builds comfort with the knowledge students will need throughout the unit (and even when they are in college). These teachers ask for specificity and follow up to reinforce.

To help you remember the scenarios in which we're most at risk of failing to set a high bar for right answers, here are four common scenarios and names to help recall them:

1. Hold out for all-the-way right: When we resist “rounding up” and saying that a student is right when he or she is only partially so.

2. Answer my question: When we push students to be disciplined about answering the question they were asked.

3. Specific vocabulary: When we ask students to lock down the details in precise words and technical terminology.

4. Leaner language: When we ask students to improve an answer by using fewer words … and sometimes clearer syntax.