Once you’ve established your rules and behavior management plan, stick with it, every single day. When you tell kids to stop talking and get back to work, but you don’t follow through, you are effectively telling them it doesn’t matter that much. This can lead to teachers raising their voices and saying things they regret. You don’t have to be mean—you just have to mean it. (Weareteachers.com)

• write a letter explaining a key idea to a friend,

• draw a sketch to visually represent new knowledge, or

• do a think, pair, share exercise with a partner.

Your own observations of students at work in class can provide valuable data as well, but they can be tricky to keep track of. Taking quick notes on a tablet or smartphone, or using a copy of your roster, is one approach.

Sharpening the saw is a metaphor for enhancing your yourself. In the context of professional reading, sharpening the saw means taking time to read and learn new things that will help you grow professionally. It’s about staying up-to-date with the best practices in education and continuously upgrading skills and knowledge. Professional reading invites reflection, improvement, and change.  It also can validate current practices.  It feeds a growth mindset and invites sharing with colleagues.  Professional reading also keeps us looking through the lens of learners which can make us better teachers.

Making and taking time to sharpen the saw through professional reading will pay large dividends.

            On February 20th, renowned writer and speaker Harry Wong died at 92. Here are some quotes from his book The First Days of School (with his wife Rosemary Wong) and other writings:

-    School is a concept wherein students are welcome to learn and enhance the quality of their lives without fear of intimidation or harm, guided by hospitable and caring people in a clean and orderly environment.

-    The most important day of a person’s education is the first day of school, not graduation day.

-    Greet your students at the door. What you do the instant the student enters the classroom communicates immediately if the student is welcome there.

-    It’s very reassuring to your students that you know what you are doing.

-    In an effective classroom students should not only know what they are doing, they should also know why and how.

-    The number one problem in the classroom is not discipline; it is the lack of procedures and routines.

-    A well-managed classroom is a task-oriented and predictable environment.

-    The effective teachers spent time organizing and structuring their classrooms so the students knew what to do to succeed.

-    Students like well-managed classes because no one yells at them and learning takes place.

-    Effective teachers spend the first two weeks teaching students to be in control of their own actions in a consistent classroom environment.

-    The three steps to teaching classroom procedures are (1) explain, model, or demonstrate the procedure; (2) rehearse and practice the procedure with your class; and (3) reinforce your students with praise and more practice until it becomes routine.

-    Do not stop teaching to give out a consequence.

-    Not all students complete their assignments, often because they either cannot understand the assignment or they fail to see the reason for doing it.

-    One of the greatest gifts a caring teacher can contribute to children is to help them learn to sit when they feel like running, to raise their hand when they feel like talking, to be polite to their neighbor, to stand in line without pushing, and to do their homework when they feel like playing. By introducing procedures in the classroom, you are also introducing procedures as a way of living a happy and successful life.

• Include choral responses for knowledge level questions.

• Whiteboards

• Finger voting

• Cold calling- not calling on only those who raise hands

• Quick writes

• Cooperative structures

• Exit tickets

• Quick online surveys

• Graphic organizers

• Partner sharing

Pay special attention to students who are reluctant to respond.  They need scaffolding or other support.  In every class period, every student should have multiple opportunities to respond.  Elementary teachers have a variety of ways to monitor this.  At the secondary level, you may need to be more intentional. A class list where you can quickly add tally marks by names of students as they respond is one way to see how it is going.  In some classes 2 or 3 students monopolize responses and thus thinking.  Sometimes it's hard to shut down the eager responders. You might need to consider a guideline such as: three people have to respond after the last person who answered a question before he/she can respond again. In group settings, no one is allowed to answer until every other group member has contributed. 

            • Keep checks for understanding brief and frequent. “Delivering long blocks of direct instruction without stopping to assess can lead to big gaps in learning,” says Gonzalez. Better to inject formative assessments several times during a lesson. Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur saw game-changing gains in students’ achievement – especially their depth of understanding – when he began including several cycles of Question-Poll-Convince Your Neighbor-Consolidate in his classes.

            • Plan “hinge” questions. Assessment guru Dylan Wiliam is an advocate of building in short, mid-lesson questions to check on whether students have grasped what’s been taught so far. A well-constructed hinge question (for example, tell which of these fractions is biggest: 4/5, 1/8, 2/2, 5/16) builds in common misconceptions and gives the teacher immediate feedback on how many students understand the concept or skill.

            • Use a system that checks all students. Some teachers check for understanding by asking, “Any questions?” or having students  signal their level of understanding with thumbs-up, thumbs-sideways, or thumbs-down. These commonly used strategies often fail to reveal gaps in student understanding. Better to use high-tech polling (Kahoot, Plickers, or other digital polling programs) or low-tech approaches like small whiteboards or students responding to multiple-choice questions by holding one, two, three, or four fingers on their chests.

            • Create a culture that normalizes mistakes. When formative assessments are low-stakes, students will take risks and explore their level of understanding without fear of negative consequences.

• Follow up on students’ responses. “Giving a formative assessment is pointless if we don’t do something in response to the results,” says Gonzalez. Some effective practices:

-    Telling students to “convince your neighbor” that their understanding is correct;

-    Reteach the concept to a small section of the class while other students work independently;

-    Have students visit learning stations that provide instruction for the different ways students may have misunderstood.

The key is prompt follow-up that directly addresses errors, misunderstanding, and confusion revealed by the formative assessment.

“5 Condition for Getting Formative Assessments Right” by Jennifer Gonzalez in Cult of Pedagogy, October 14, 2024

            In this Edutopia article, Youki Terada says cold calling has a mixed track record. When teachers call on students who haven’t raised their hands, it can get more students engaged and spark lively discussions, but it can also be seen by students as an ongoing gotcha, with anxiety overshadowing learning. Terada suggests how cold calling can be warmed up, helping teachers get feedback on how lessons are going, jump-start discussions, and get more students involved – including those who, for a variety of reasons, might not say anything.

            • Focus on the effort, not the answer. Students will feel less intimidated by cold calling when it’s preceded by comments like, “This material is new, so I don’t expect you to have a perfect answer – I just want to hear your thinking on the topic” or “That’s a really good idea. Can anyone else build on it?”

            • Offer a lifeline. As in the show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” students can “phone a friend,” ask the audience, or use a 50:50, choosing between two possible answers. One study found that giving students a chance to back out of a cold call cut down on anxiety.

            • Use students’ names. Doing this in a friendly, welcoming manner, accompanied by eye contact and nodding, can make a cold call seem less like an interrogation and more of a genuine invitation to be part of the discussion.

            • Build on what students know. If a student doesn’t seem to have the answer or is waffling, the teacher can rephrase the question, elicit a partial answer, and help them build on prior knowledge.

            • Be mindful of your disposition. Teachers can sour the process by interrupting students’ responses, breaking eye contact or turning away, grimacing, or using an aggressive or condescending tone of voice.

            • Call on groups. The teacher can divide the class into pairs or small groups, spreading out the responsibility for responding and allowing students to put their heads together to come up with high-level answers.

            • Cast a wide net. Some teachers use equity sticks to randomly call on students, which keeps everyone on their toes, thinking about the answer, poised to contribute.

            • Extend wait time. An effective way to improve the quality of students’ answers is to ask a good question and wait several beats before calling on a student. This gives everyone time to think, including slow-processing deep thinkers who will come up with great answers if they’re given a little more time.

“Does Cold Calling Work? Here’s What the Research Says” by Youki Terada in Edutopia, April 26, 2023

            In this American Educational Research Journal article, Lukas Mundelsee (Heidelberg University/University of Erfurt) and Susanne Jurkowski (University of Erfurt) make several observations about students’ oral participation in classrooms:

-    Worldwide, most class time consists of teachers’ questions and students’ answers.

-    Oral participation is predictive of student learning and academic achievement.

-    Therefore, creating opportunities for oral participation is an important teacher goal.

-    Students’ spoken answers give teachers real-time information on their progress.

-    Students’ responses allow teachers to praise good answers and correct mistakes.

-    Speaking in class allows students to think out loud and elaborate on their answers.

-    Teachers often call on students who raise their hands (versus cold-calling).

-    Students who raise their hands do better on tests, whether they are called on or not.

-    Only a handful of students raise their hands and participate orally on a regular basis.

-    One study found that one-third of students were silent and never raised their hands.

-    Shy students are especially reluctant to volunteer to speak in class.

-    Hand-raising is a “gateway” to student learning and achievement.

“Given the important role of oral participation within student learning and achievement,” say Mundelsee and Jurkowski, “the silent and passive in-class behavior of shy students causes them to miss important learning opportunities, and may explain their poor school attainments, even though they are no less intelligent.”

            What is shyness? The authors define it as “a temperamental wariness in the face of social novelty and/or self-conscious behavior in situations of perceived social evaluation.” School is an especially problematic arena for shy children since being silent and passive deprives them of important learning opportunities. Teachers tend to mark shy students down, wrongly concluding they are uninterested and lack motivation. Unlike introverts and students who don’t care, shy students do want to engage, but hold back because they dread being the center of attention and making a mistake, and, if they give the right answer, fear classmates calling them a geek or nerd.

            What can teachers do to encourage shy students to get more involved in class discussions? This is an especially important question for young adolescents, who are more sensitive to public embarrassment and peer disapproval. Mundelsee and Jurkowski conducted a study in German middle-school classrooms and identified six key variables:

            • Student-teacher relationships – A positive bond between teachers and shy students can make students more willing to raise their hands and take part in class discussions. But there are two complicating factors: (a) if shy students believe the teacher understands and sympathizes, they might not raise their hands because they think the teacher won’t mind; and (b) if a shy student is seen as too close to the teacher, peers can react negatively toward a “teacher’s pet,” making it less likely shy students will speak up.

            • Peer relationships – Perversely, the more popular shy students are with classmates, the less likely they are to volunteer in class. Mundelsee and Jurkowski believe this is because shy students don’t want to jeopardize their street cred by standing out as overachievers. Speaking up can also put them in direct competition with their classmates and be seen as “stealing the show.”

            • Teacher’s wait time – How long a teacher pauses after asking a question encourages hand-raising by all students, including those who are shy. Mundelsee and Jurkowski speculate that there may be a sweet spot in wait time for shy students – not too short and not too long – because too little wait time pressures students to respond immediately and too long a pause might lead a shy student to ruminate about what the teacher is looking for and lay low.

            • Cold and warm calling – Shy students dread being cold-called by teachers, and in classes where teachers do this a lot, students’ anxiety interferes with concentration and produces more wrong answers if they’re called on. Some teachers, aware of this dynamic, refrain from cold-calling shy students, but that, say Mundelsee and Jurkowski, risks reinforcing shy students’ never participating. Warm calling (allowing students to discuss a question with an elbow partner before being called on) should make things better for shy students, but this study didn’t find that to be true. The quality of teacher-student relationships was another variable in cold and warm calling, making it hard to draw clear conclusions.

            • Class size – Not surprisingly, bigger classes make it less likely that shy students will raise their hands and participate, but it’s not clear that smaller classes will have the opposite effect. In a very small group – for example, seven students with positive relationships – shy students might be comfortable participating, but could also be more anxious about giving wrong answers or becoming the center of attention. Mundelsee and Jurkowski say more research is needed in this area.

            • School subject – There wasn’t a clear finding across different middle-school subject areas. In one area (natural sciences) where shy students seemed to be raising their hands more often, other factors – teacher-student relationships, teacher personality, type of questions, wait-time, and cold-calling – made it impossible to draw a clear conclusion.

            [These findings point to the importance of teachers moving away from calling on students who raise their hands and instead doing frequent checks for understanding with well-formulated “hinge-point” questions, using all-class response systems, and orchestrating small- and large-group discussions around students’ responses.  K.M.]

“Opening the Gateway to Oral Participation: Exploring Facilitative Contextual Factors in the Association Between Student Shyness and Hand Raising” by Lukas Mundelsee and Susanne Jurkowski in American Educational Research Journal, February 2025 (Vol. 62, #1, pp. 53-91)

            In their new online book, Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival, Tim Surma and co-authors from eight countries summarize research on the critical importance of background knowledge to successful student learning. The core idea: “It’s much easier to add new information to an organized set of existing knowledge than to start learning something completely new.” And this is not just memorizing a “bunch of facts,” they say. “Imparting specific shared knowledge in early grades is important for achieving high levels of citizen competence and high levels of equality and equity.”

In the book’s appendix, the authors address every teacher’s challenge: how to get key information into students’ long-term memories. They summarize what studies have found to be the most effective strategies for promoting “durable learning”:

-    Interest – Content is grounded in real-world issues of significance to students.

-    Test expectation – Students know there will be a final exam.

-    Coherence – Materials explicitly link concepts to each other and minimize distractions.

-    Segmentation – Complex new information is broken down into manageable chunks.

-    Prior knowledge – Relevant information stored in long-term memory is activated.

-    Dual code and multimedia – Words are accompanied by helpful images.

-    Multiple examples – Concrete representations and stories are provided and compared.

-    Worked examples – Step-by-step explanations present details of successful procedures.

-    Questioning and explaining – Students pose and answer deep-level questions.

-    Scaffolding – Support is adjusted to students’ needs and removed at mastery.

-    Deliberate practice – New knowledge and skills are gone over repeatedly.

-    Feedback – Students get information on how they are doing in real time.

-    Generative practice – Students produce explanations, outlines, summaries, drawings, answers, mind-maps from memory.

-    Retrieval practice – Students pull information from memory, which strengthens links.

-    Spaced practice – Learning sessions are spread out over time (versus cramming).

-    Interleaved practice – Practice sessions mix different knowledge and skills.

-    Self-regulated learning – Students get explicit instruction on understanding their cognitive processes and taking responsibility for their own learning.

Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival by Tim Surma, Claudio Vanhees, Michiel Wils, Jasper Nijlunsing, Nuno Crato, John Hattie, Daniel Muijs, Elizabeth Rata, Dylan Wiliam, and Paul Kirschner (Springer, 2025)

            “Mitigating teacher workload is one of my core values as an instructional leader,” says Amir Taron Ayres in this Edutopia article. He remembers the countless hours he spent as a new teacher trying to write good lesson plans, and believes Gemini and other new chatbots can save teachers huge amounts of time as they create high-quality learning experiences for their students. From his current work supervising New Jersey ELA and social studies teachers, Ayres suggests the following steps to make the best use of AI. Click the article link below for his actual prompts and Gemini’s responses step by step.

            • Reflect on the purpose of your lesson plan. This includes the curriculum standards, the academic needs of your students, and a lesson that is engaging, challenging, and effective.

            • Use AI to unpack the curriculum standards and learning expectations. Ayres uses the ACDQ prompt: what the chatbot should act as, the context for the query, asking it to consider the lesson in some depth, and then asking the teacher questions. His prompt was for a 10^th-grade ELA lesson in a unit on making an argument, argumentative texts, and argumentative writing. Gemini broke the lesson into three learning objectives: crafting precise claims, distinguishing claims, and organizing academic writing.

            • Choose the goal you want to teach. Ayres prompted Gemini to revise the learning goals to ensure higher-order thinking based on Bloom’s taxonomy and measurability of knowledge, concept, and skill, focused on analyzing claims and counterclaims. Gemini responded with a revised set of goals reflecting the refined learning target.

            • Use AI to provide options for assessment. Ayres prompted Gemini: “For each goal, think deeply and create a choice of three assessments per goal. Ask me any relevant questions including but not limited to my class, student demographics, reading proficiency levels, student disabilities, and languages spoken by students.” Gemini responded with three assessment options and six questions about student choice, technology access, collaboration, grading rubrics, assessment timeline, and specific examples of topics or issues that would be particularly engaging for this group of students. Ayres responded to each, and Gemini revised the assessments to reflect his preferences.

            “Now that you have a great objective and aligned assessment,” Ayres concludes, “you can use AI to further assist in planning your instruction, or do that on your own. Rather than simply prompting the program to create the rest of the plan, think about each part of the lesson and tap your assistant when needed.”

“A Curriculum Supervisor’s Guide to AI-Assisted Lesson Planning” by Amir Taron Ayres in Edutopia, February 25, 2025