Technique 29: All hands - Pacing

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

Technique 29: All hands
Pacing

Raising your hand is an act that deserves some reflection, even if at first it seems straightforward.

For example, every time students raise their hands they mark the passage of an event worthy of action. They say, both to themselves and others, “There was a question there, and I want to answer it.” The question is distinguished from the previous one. It has novelty. Now it is a milepost. The intent to answer also distinguishes the moment. It's a decision that the lesson is worth it: the rewards of speaking outweigh the risks, There is a shift in student's self-perception: I wasn't just sitting here passively; I was having ideas. I want to share them. The act of hand-raising can draw students further into a lesson and change them from the outside in.

Hand-raising is also contagious. When students see their peers eagerly volunteering, a norm is established that the classroom is a safe, engaging place that others want to be a part of, and the incentive to participate spreads around the room. “The norms we hold arise predominantly from our observation of others,” says Peps Mccrea. And making a decision to engage with the content publicly affirms that a student thinks being a part of the group and its activity is worthwhile. It is a referendum on the worthiness of the class or the lesson.

For teachers, the sight of a host of volunteers means not having to try to drag participants into the conversation. Few things make time move more slowly, even in a staff meeting, than a question hanging in the air as we all avoid each other's eyes. The seconds lengthen as everyone shifts uncomfortably in their seats.

Much of what we think about a classroom when we observe it is in fact a reading of the semiotics of hand-raising: Are students eager to speak? Are hands sparse and reluctant? Do students speak without raising their hands at all?

All Hands helps you manage aspects of student hand-raising to maximize the benefits of its influence on pacing and engagement and shape students' perception of what's happening in the classroom.

Hands Down

It may sound counterintuitive (particularly in a technique called All Hands), but the act of putting your hand down is also important: It says that one question has been answered and a new one is coming. It inserts a milepost and causes students to perceive separate events. An undifferentiated stretch of time in which the class was “talking about the government” becomes a question about the Executive Branch followed by a question about the Judicial Branch followed by one about the Legislative Branch. Mileposts are speeding past. Pacing is sped up.

Alternatively, we've all had the student whose hand remains permanently raised throughout a series of questions and answers, waving in the air for minutes at a time. If you call on him you are unlikely to get a response to the most recent comment or the topic currently under discussion. You're likely to get a response to a question that caused your student to raise his hand ten minutes ago. You're more likely to be calling on someone who wants to speak but not necessarily to respond or answer or connect to the ideas of others.

Lowering your hand also communicates respect for your peers because it's difficult to listen and have your hand up at the same time. A classroom where hands are up while someone is speaking is a classroom where people are saying, essentially, “What you're saying won't change what I want to say.” It's very hard to listen carefully to someone else’s idea when your raised hand is a cue to try to keep your own previous idea in your working memory. Putting hands down when someone else is speaking communicates respect and interest in someone else's idea. In order to ensure that students' enthusiasm to participate isn't dampened every time they lower their hands, it's helpful to share the rationale for students and have a clear cue for when hands should be raised or lowered, even something as simple as “hands down” or a nonverbal gesture to remind students to be fully attentive to the comments of their class teammate. (For more on the effect that this peer-to-peer listening can have on the speaker, check out technique 44, Habits of Discussion.)

You can see an example of how this works in Christine Torres's vocabulary lesson. “The word ’implore’ means what?” Christine asks, and almost every hand is in the air as she pauses briefly before identifying Jovon as the student who will answer. As she does this every hand goes down, as if to say Jovon, we are listening. It's your turn. Seconds later Christine says, “Read the situation for me loud and proud …” and again almost every hand goes up before she calls on Juju, whereupon, again, everyone's hand goes down. This reminds students: now is the time to listen to what Juju says, not to be thinking of what you would have said. Seconds later Christine asks, “What did the girl do in this situation? Use the definition.” Again every hand goes up. Now it's Etani's turn and the process of putting hands down—again, this happens on cue because Christine has taught it—reminds students of the rest of the routine implicit in someone else getting called on. Putting one's hand down to listen cues the next step in listening 'margin-bottom:0cm;line-height:normal;vertical-align: baseline'>Beyond the effect of each individual interaction, in Christine's use of All Hands you can clearly see the mileposts flying past. The illusion of speed has been created. A traditionally slow activity—vocabulary—has been brought to life.

Press Pause on Digressions

Sometimes we lightheartedly refer to managing a group of people as herding cats. In any group of people, some will occasionally just wander off in their own direction, physically or intellectually—even when it's beneficial or appropriate to stick together. When you've got ground to cover as a teacher, you can't always let everyone just head off on a tangent. A good cowboy has to know how to bring the wanderers back into the fold quickly and smoothly. A good teacher, too. It's part of the job.

Similarly, even when they are eager to share, students' comments can inadvertently derail the pacing or focus of a lesson by being digressive or just plain off-topic. Don't get me wrong. I love long and insightful student comments—when they come at the right time. However, a long and tangentially related comment that involves references to several obscure and only semi-relevant shows and movies at the wrong time is a rally-killer. (It can be that even with best intentions and offered at the “right time”) There you are, finally having gotten a quality discussion about The Giver going with lots of kids weighing in. There are only five minutes left in class but there's so much good thinking going on and just maybe the epiphany about what “release” means is about to happen, when one young wanderer begins a long-winded and meandering discussion of some of his personal highlights of the novel. He's lost his train of thought now, so he's throwing words at the problem—trying to use quantity to make up for a loss of clarity. In that moment it feels a bit like grounding into a double play, except maybe it's multiple double plays (I say this lovingly). Suddenly the optimism that you're going to pull it out and get to the epiphany evaporates into thin air.

In this situation you need a way to press pause on the digression, to help him cut his comment off even though he hasn't offered to end it. If you can do so warmly and skillfully, without making your student feel embarrassed, it's good for the class discussion (and therefore for learning) and good for him. To let him go on and on is a disservice. “Helpful” is providing a gentle nudge to help young people understand how to read their audience and setting.

Ending a digression quickly and politely just takes a little technique. I call it pressing pause because the word “pause” is so helpful, especially when followed by a statement pointing out what's useful about what's already been shared. “Pause there, Daniel. You've given us so much to talk about already. Let's let some other folks respond.” Boom. The rally is back on! The positivity is important. Some other variations might include: “Ooh. Pause there. You mentioned the memories he's started to receive and how emotional they are. Who else thought about that?” or even “Ooh. Pause. Interesting. Yes, the memories are so emotional; who can tell us why that matters?” You also might be able to redirect students to the most productive part of their answer: “Pause. That phrase, ’more emotion than he's ever felt.’ Let's focus on that for a minute.” This is a way of gently cutting him off before he can get too far afield, while still extracting value from his answer and, you hope, helping him see what was valuable in it for next time.

If you are able to convey your appreciation for a student's participation while maintaining focus on the question at hand, you'll be more likely to step in and press pause when it's necessary for the sake of the learning community. Although some unexpected student comments are worth their weight in gold, some are not, and it's the job of the teacher to maintain the lesson's pacing through how time is allocated in the classroom.

A final note: I am a big fan of the word “pause,” specifically, in this application, as opposed to the words “stop” or “freeze” or something else. Pause implies that the stop is temporary and has a gentleness. “Stop” tends to make it feel like you've done something wrong—“pause” implies you will start up again at some point, that you will continue to share your thinking. Which, happily, is true.

Online Lessons: Online Needs Flow

Pacing draws on the principle of flow, the idea that people take pleasure in being swept up in an engaging and dynamic activity. This is a critical driver of excellence in the classroom. Online, it's necessary to stave off disaster. Students who are bored or feel no connection to the lesson can't walk out of a classroom. If they disengage you can see it—in the empty page before them or the lack of follow-through on task. Sometimes they'll make you see their disengagement via behavior. Not online. There, unengaged students will simply slip away. They'll turn off their camera if you'll let them and then goodness only knows what they're doing. Or they'll toggle off to another screen or engage themselves on their phone or some other device. They'll be playing Minecraft or be on TikTok and you'll never know they're gone.

So teaching in an online setting puts a premium on pacing—the momentum of a lesson has to draw students in right from the outset and sustain their focus. In the video Arrianna Chopp: Means of Participation, you can see Arrianna Chopp of Libertas Prep in Los Angeles bring pacing to her online lesson from the word go. Within seconds of starting class there's a task that everyone completes (answering in the chat). This is supported by Arrianna “narrating the chat,” that is, letting students know she sees and appreciates when they participate but also building a sense of momentum to make participation visible to other students. It's like a wave of forward momentum that she quickly translates into a mini discussion where three students in a row give their opinion. It's fast and engaging and inclusive of everyone. There's not time to get lost in the far corners of the Internet. Just possibly this sense of dynamism—especially at the start of the lesson—is something we can borrow online.