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

Technique 39: Silent solo
Building ratio through writing

Successful teaching often consists of sublime moments achieved in part via mundane tools. That is certainly true of this chapter, which describes how changes in the ways we ask students to write can transform the ways they think and maximize the value and quality of other activities we engage in as well. If you can get everyone in the room to write for a sustained period of time, the benefits to student thinking and discussion will be many.

· Giving students the opportunity to write for a minute or so before a discussion will lead to better listening, more confident participation, and higher-quality ideas to share.

· Short, formative written reflections in the midst of learning can help students not just to document what they think but to discover and expand it.

· Glancing over students' shoulders at the ideas they are wrestling with in response to a question can allow you to “hunt” (select students or ideas that deserve the class’s attention and focus) rather than “fish” (call on students blindly in hopes that what they share will be germane or apropos). A Cold Call that starts, “Tariq, you used a fascinating word in your reflection: spurned. Can you talk about that a bit?” changes not only the discussion but Tariq's sense of himself as a valued thinker in the classroom.

Those are powerful things. But the if in “If you can get everyone to write” is a big one, especially if you raise your sights even a little higher—as in: “If you can reliably get every student to write willingly, thoughtfully, and on cue, and to sustain the effort for a significant duration.”

It's a case where the sublime rests upon mastery of the mundane. The technique Silent Solo involves an apparently mundane goal: teaching students to reliably write, on cue, as a matter of habit. Once established, the technique is nearly invisible, manifested in humble moments observers might overlook. You say, of the outcome of an experiment or a scene in the novel, “Well, that was unexpected. Take 90 seconds to reflect in writing on reasons why this might have happened. Go!” Even though suddenly every pencil is scratching, observers might yawn and glance out the windows. They might see it as downtime—a little break in class. They might think your students arrived in your classroom doing that naturally. They'd be wrong, of course.

Silent Solo lets you send students into a task where the Participation Ratio is high—everyone in the room answering the question at once—and the Think Ratio is as well—framing ideas carefully in words is an inherently rigorous task. But the ability to conjure a moment like that—reliably, over and over—requires consistency and attention to detail to establish.

I want to pause here and underscore the role of silence in Silent Solo. It's not just writing but quiet writing that's the necessary routine. For some, that's a tough sell. Your vision of an ideal class might be characterized by boisterous discussion or passionate debate. However, providing time for focused, thoughtful reflection (typically prior to that full-voiced discussion or debate) gives all students a moment to gather their ideas, to listen to their own inner voice, and capture elusive ideas that only yield when you stick with them. Silence is necessary to the deepest reflection.¹ Students deserve to experience it—doubly so in a screen-filled world where exactly that sustained, uninterrupted reflection is so rare. They may not get the opportunity anywhere else.

The time your students spend with their pencils transcribing the reflections of a quiet mind will build their ability to sustain focus and likely result in their best thinking. The resulting discussion will ironically be more likely to crackle with life if you allow it to be preceded by thoughtful silence.

You can see the power of the system at work in the video Montage: Silent Solo.

Within seconds of Hasan Clayton's prompt “eyes in,” every student is at work, reflecting thoughtfully in writing on Hasan's question. They start on cue and sustain this for four solid minutes. Four minutes of sustained reflection in a world where attention is increasingly fractured and interrupted by technology is a profound thing.

At the drop of a hat, Tamesha McGuire's first graders are off and writing too, reflecting on the strategies they used to make sets of ten. Compare this to a typical classroom where a teacher might ask for verbal answers: “What strategies did you use to make ten?” In that case a few students might answer, describing gamely but perhaps imprecisely, what they did. In Tamesha's classroom everyone answers and describes their thinking with the precise word choice and syntax that writing demands. You can't flex the written word like the spoken one. To write is to think harder. Both ratios have been multiplied.

“Go ahead, take one minute,” Jamila Hammet tells the students at her table; they grab their pencils and are off. The writing is of shorter duration than Hasan's. They're reading Because of Winn-Dixie and the question is about how they feel when looking at a picture of a dog. The lesson is about the nature of the bonds between animals and humans. She wants to insert a short period of personal reflection to help students understand the characters in the novel better. As they write, they are focused, intent, and quite happy to be putting their thoughts down on paper. Because the routine is so solid, Jamila can insert small bursts of writing like this at almost any point in her lesson to increase the quality of student reflection, the amount of participation, or to give students a moment to shift gears and respond thoughtfully.

You can see a version of this system, slightly modified for older students, in Sadie McCleary’s Chemistry class. Her students answer three questions over six minutes. Efficient, focused, and effective, every student is on task and doing the core work of chemistry independently and in writing.

The goal of Silent Solo, as these teachers show, is a shared habit: one in which all students engage and some perhaps look forward to. There are clues in the montage as to how the habit was built and is maintained:

· Tamesha is warm, upbeat, and cheery. She first praises effort where she sees it, naming specific students so they feel seen and important, then quickly transitions to reading quietly over students' shoulders to show how much she values their ideas.

· Hasan, too, shows his appreciation for students who engage the writing straight away. He modulates his voice, lowering it to use a more reflective tone that matches the task. He reminds his students to write in complete sentences.

· Jamila's language—“go ahead”—and her hint of a smile imply that students must be eager to write and cherish the opportunity for reflection. Perhaps at first some did and some didn't, but I suspect her introduction made a least a few feel more excited.

· Sadie adapts her routine to a problem set. She's clear about the task and the time and graciously protects the transition to begin from disruption with a nonverbal “pause” signal and a promise to come check in with her students individually. To lose momentum would have been a catastrophe for the focus she'd created.

The downside of these videos is that they show you—mostly—what it looks likes after the routine is formed. Applying what we know about building strong and successful habits will be critical to understanding the initial steps required to establish Silent Solo in your classroom.

A habit is a chain of actions that happen in sequence. Since one action is dependent on the one prior we are required to be intentional about the design of the component parts and how students learn them. To sustain and maximize a habit we also have to think about motivation—how do we get students to embrace the habit willingly, as students appear to do in Hasan’s, Tamesha’s, Jamila’s, and Sadie's classrooms, so that independent work becomes a joy rather than a chore? We have to ask: What makes students likely to follow—eagerly even—the chain of actions in the habit?

To turn an activity into a routine, make your directions simple, clear cut, and stepped, says Peps Mccrea.² You want first steps that are easily remembered and require few decisions. This makes the habit easy to activate, as a counter-example may show. Let's say you've planned for students to reflect on your question for three minutes in writing. You say, “Please take out a piece of paper and answer the question, Why do most animals live in the canopy of a typical rainforest?” Unfortunately, at this point, success is already in doubt. You have thirty students and some number of them will struggle to find paper. Someone will have to decide what kind of paper to use … and possibly discuss this with a peer … or ask you: Is this paper OK? I don't have any notebook paper. Is this OK? Someone else will ask for something to write on. Distraction will replace the quiet hum of thinking in writing—Have we started yet, Ms. Collins?—and the three minutes you've allocated for this written task will quickly evaporate.

If students already have journals handy or out on their desks, when you say, “Why do most animals live in the canopy of a typical rainforest? Go,” initiating the chain of actions would be far easier and there would be fewer interruptions. Notice how this happens in the video Jessica Bracey: Keystone. She tells her students to start writing in their journals, which are on their desks. Within seconds they are all deeply engaged in the task. Every student. The speed of their response is important. It's not just that potentially wasted time is made productive; it's that there is continuity of thinking. The ideas that were in their heads as they read are still in their heads as they write, undisturbed by a shuffle for paper or search for a pen. Routines like this harvest attention as much as they harvest time.

You could replace journals with notes or notebooks (as Sadie McCleary does) or with a packet. In fact, as I discuss in technique 4, Double Plan, one of the main benefits of having a packet—a single document where students can engage with all aspects of the lesson—is that it preserves continuity of student thought throughout the lesson. When the question is written down, students can check it so they don't lose sight of their focus as they write. Having the question prewritten also simplifies direction giving. One of the reasons directions are vague or unclear is that we are trying to frame the question as we assign it. Planning it in advance and writing it down protects against this.

Recall, for example, the packet from Reading Reconsidered Curriculum that I shared in technique 4, Double Plan. Since every student is working from the same page, and all have the same space in which to reflect before discussion, every brain maximizes its engagement with the academic task, rather than the logistics of how and where to complete it. When you give the cue, students dive into writing time with their thoughts intact. Simplicity has made the habit easy to activate, with benefits in focus and depth of thinking.

“Make the first action easy off the blocks,” Mccrea continues, and students will be more vested in the rest of the routine. The videos in the montage show the power of this. The goal when you begin building the routine is the simplest possible activation step: to get pencils moving. All of them. Right away. Later, you can layer in further expectations; for now you want to make it as simple as possible to succeed. It helps if the cue to begin is consistent—same words every time—and if it's short and delivered in a crisp tone that “pops” so that students react quickly and decisively. Mccrea notes that a good cue should be “punchy”—short and delivered with a change of tone or pace. The cues in the video have this in common. We want students bursting out of the blocks. The synchrony of everyone taking action at once makes the norm more visible and reinforces it. “Go!” is a great punchy cue—as in One minute to think in writing. Go!—but there are alternatives: Hasan says “Eyes in” and Tamesha uses the slightly more playful “Go to work.”

The second key aspect of the activation step is that it be clear cut. The less gray area, the better. “Where possible, actions should be things that can be considered done or not done, rather than partially done.” It's clear, then, whether the routine is happening successfully and productively. That's why pencils moving is such an ideal first step. If students' pencils are moving, Silent Solo is happening. If they are not, it is not the habit you had envisioned and therefore not serving students to the best possible effect. Some teachers' in-cue when establishing the routine is “Pencils moving. Go!” Later they remove the “Pencils moving” part.

The importance of a crisp start raises an important question, however. Students, understandably, may ask for time to think before they write. As I discuss in technique 38, Everybody Writes, thinking through writing is, for most students, a new way of processing and students will initially want to process in the way they perceive themselves to have been most successful in the past, by first reflecting and then writing. This is where your rollout to students is key. You might say something like: “When I say go, please do your best to answer question 2 in your packet. This exercise is not for a grade—what you write is for you and you won't turn it in.³ Challenge yourself to think in writing! I will expect to see your pencils moving the whole time. Go!” Or you might say, “It will be hard, but push yourself. You will learn to write your way through anxieties and concerns. If you get stuck, write about why you are stuck.” Or say, “A better question might have been … But keep your pencil moving! Go!” The keys here are relieving the pressure students may be feeling to get the answer “right” and getting students started trying to think in writing. Later you can add expectations⁴ and the technique will establish for your students an indispensable cognitive tool. For now you want a vibrant, positive norm.

You can also start small. The first time you assign Silent Solo writing, do it for forty-five seconds. Challenge students to see if they can write the whole way. Help them by making the initial question an interesting one and maybe by giving them a phrase to start off their answer if they get stuck. Ensuring success is ensuring buy-in. The next time your goal will be a minute. Later, ninety seconds. Within a month you'll be writing for five or ten minutes at a stretch. But if you try to start with ten minutes you likely won't get there because students will, effectively, practice struggling. You want them to practice succeeding.

Most likely, students will continue to seek assistance with this challenging task, even after the rollout and even after time has been extended. As you circulate, students will likely call you over and want to tell you what they are thinking instead of or before writing it down. Remember, allowing them to talk instead of writing to explore their thoughts won't help them learn to think in writing, and that is the cognitive habit we are aiming for. Try saying something like “I can't wait to read it once you've written it” or “Great, get it down before you forget it.” This brief pep talk both refocuses students on the essential challenge of the task (the writing) and reassures them at a tough moment that whatever they get down will be valuable to themselves and to the class’s discourse.

A few other implementation notes:

· Another key source of motivation is transparency of purpose. Understanding the “why” behind a task usually helps the reluctant or skeptical get started. You'd want to understand why this “silent writing” wasn't busy work, too. So you might preview—briefly!—what comes later in the lesson (“Take one minute Silent Solo to write down some ideas about what Esperanza's doll might represent. We're going to use these ideas to shape our discussion of symbolism when the timer goes off”) or building investment up front (“Reading your faces, I think this chapter intrigued you. I can't wait to read some of your thoughts. Take one minute to jot your observations. Go!”). Linking moments of Silent Solo with the larger trajectory of the lesson can help students feel invested in their writing and more likely to make the most of the time provided.

· Student motivation is also impacted by what you do as they're working. If your affect and actions show students their ideas have value, it will provide an incentive to continue writing. As you circulate, remind students gently and warmly of expectations if needed—“keep those pencils moving”—but not exclusively or even primarily. Make sure to also take the time to read over shoulders, comment, and nod appreciatively. Oh, that's interesting, Carol. Can't wait to talk about that, Grant. Nice, Israel. Great word … or just raise your eyebrows and smile. Appreciating the content of what students have written makes them feel successful and scholarly and it will help make strong thinking a habit.

The clip Emily Badillo: Three Minutes on Your Own shows many of the elements of habit-building in action. Emily is a guest teacher in the classroom where this clip is filmed so it's her first time working with these students. (She's piloting the Reading Reconsidered Curriculum my team has developed.⁵) You can see that her question is already written in a packet that all students have on their desks. Students’ task is to begin writing as soon as they read it. She explicitly calls the habit of independent writing Silent Solo, by the way. It's a catchy phrase but it also reminds her students of the rules. We took the name of this habit from hearing a teacher—we're not sure who!—use that phrase: Silent Solo. Two minutes. What has Cassie just found out? Go.

A few other things you'll see Emily do (and the time in the video where you see them):

· 0:18: Emily sets up a challenge task that students “get” to do if they're done early. It's framed positively (a challenge) but one big excuse for why they wouldn't be writing (“I'm done!”) has already been eliminated.

· 0:26: Emily sets the timer. This makes the goal of writing for three minutes real and tangible. (For more, see technique 30, Work the Clock.)

· 0:29: Emily slows down her pace in circulating and looks carefully to see if students are following through—carefully enough for them to notice her in their peripheral vision. The message is: I am looking carefully to see if everyone is writing. If you show it matters to you, it will be far more likely to matter to students.

· 0:32: Emily narrates her expectation: She is “looking for a table where everybody's pencil is moving.” There's that clear-cut unambiguous activation step.

· 0:35: Emily notes examples of good follow-through by Ezra, Logan, and others.

· 1:02: Emily tells one student who would prefer to talk than write: “Don't tell me, write it down.” Her tone is appreciative, but she also reinforces expectations for writing.

· 1:19: Circulating, Emily focuses on engaging student ideas and asks questions to show she's reading carefully. At 1:50, Emily is careful to show appreciation for effort—“Nice job. Keep going.” It's especially important that the last thing students hear is the phrase “Keep going.” This ensures that her appreciation doesn't accidentally promote less follow-through.

You'll also notice that throughout there are long stretches of silence in which to think and work. Emily creates silence—she makes her expectations clear and enforces them—but also honors the silence herself. And of course after these three minutes of silent work, students will have a chance to share their ideas out loud with partners and with the rest of the room. By setting aside this time for silent writing, Emily ensures that students will have time to process and ideas to share.