Why I can't use 'cold call' anymore

On the importance of labels and definitions

Unless you’ve been off-grid for the past decade (or have no interest in teaching) you’ll be well aware of the unprecedented success of Doug Lemov and his book, Teach Like A Champion. Now on its third iteration (TLaC 3.0) Doug’s book has striven mightily to codify the practice of effective teachers and this has involved - in part - naming the ‘plays’ effective teachers use.

Although I admire the enterprise, I’m embarrassed to say I’ve not actually read the book. I have a copy of the first edition which I’ve sometimes referenced but I honestly have no idea of all the current labels and their definitions.

I do know that Doug’s terminology has become commonplace parlance in English staff rooms and classrooms, and has, in many cases, almost entirely replaced previously used terms. ‘Cold call,’ ‘check for understanding,’ ratio,’ ‘no opt out,’ ‘do now’ and ‘right is right’ are all ubiquitous. In some cases (ratio is great example) we’ve been given labels for things we just didn’t think about before and in others we’ve been afforded some much needed clarity.

One of the criticisms sometimes made of Teach Like A Champion is that is simply repackaging stuff that good teachers have always done. This is both true and unfair. Cold call is a good example. For some time we’ve known that just asking questions of kids who put their hands up to signal that they know the answer is insufficient. I definitely knew I shouldn’t just ask the kids with their hands up in lessons long before TLaC was first published in 2010 but I didn’t really know why or how to do it well. Doug has done an excellent job of explaining this process in a way that helps teachers to understand and enact it.

Such a good job in fact that the popularity of the labels has become unmoored from the definitions Doug gave them. Almost every school I visit has lessons which begin with Do Nows and where teachers Check for Understanding using Cold Call. But teachers (often even within the same school) are using these terms to describe quite different activities. As these terms have replaced the labels we all previously used we’ve all come to think they’re ours and that we can use them to describe whatever it is we do that seems to fit our broad understanding. I’m as guilty as anyone else.

As you may be aware, there’s a whole subculture of disgruntled educators who have it in for Doug and TLaC. Their issue with Cold Call is emblematic of some misguided hobbledehoy about adult authority and the sanctity and inherent goodness of childhood and children. Teachers deliberately forcing children who don’t want to speak is cruel and humiliating blah blah blah. Of course, no one wants children to be humiliated and, despite my lack of familiarity with the current TLaC iteration, I know Doug goes to great pains to explain how to avoid all this. But, who cares about logic and reason when you have feels on your side? And the killer blow is the name itself: call calling is corporate telesales. Such capitalist, consumerist bullshit surely has no place in education. And what’s more, cold calling sounds so … cold!

Although all this is obviously nonsense, I resisted using cold call for the longest time because it was too … American? Slick? Not mine? In actuality probably for no better reason than an unpalatable mix of envy and awkwardness. But, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Right? So, seeing as everyone kind of has a shared understanding of what CC means, and because it’s efficient to use neat labels rather than lengthy explanations, I too began referring to, and thinking in terms of, cold call.

But it turns out that what I mean by cold call and what you mean and what Doug means might all be a bit different. Of course, we can find out what Doug means by reading the book, but what if we don’t know we don’t know?

My issue is that if there’s a canonical take on what CC is and is not and I pop up saying it’s something a teeny bit different then I could be doing more harm than good when pontificating about what I think it means to me. This being the case, now feels like an appropriate time to start using different labels for what I mean: ones I can control a bit more because I get to decide their definition. Even if no one else uses them I can at least point at the definition I choose and say, this.

As I’ve previously set out, my approach to using any pedagogical tool is start by being clear about the problem I want to solve. Essentially, I ask questions either to check whether students are paying attention or to see if and how they’re making sense of what’s been taught. Until I come up with better labels, I’m going to call these different approaches ‘attention checking’ and ‘sense making’

Here’s what I think each should look like:

1. Attention checking

I have a seating plan on a clipboard on which I mark off when students have (or haven’t) answered questions and, in some cases, brief notes on what they’ve said. When I want to check students have caught something important I’ll select someone to ask and ask them to repeat what has just been said. If they can, I’ll tick them off and ask someone else the same question. If it’s something key that we’re going to come back to later in the lesson I’ll do this multiple times, swapping the question and the answer to try to increase the flexibility with which students can recall it.

If I think someone’s drifted off, I’ll ask them what’s just happened even if they’ve been ticked off a few times. If I was right I let them know, politely but firmly, that I need them to pay attention. If I’m wrong - I am sometimes - I thank them and move on.

If I ask a student what I, or another student, has just said and they can’t repeat it, that’s pretty good evidence they weren’t paying attention. I tell them they need to listen carefully, that I’m going to ask another student the same question and that I’m going to come back to them and ask them what was said. I mark them with an asterix and make absolutely sure I do return to them.

All this is pretty ‘cold’ in that I want to signal that students need to pay attention and that I will be frequently and actively checking that they are. I keep the stakes low but I want students to know that they are accountable for their participation and concentration. As such ‘attention checking’ uses closed questions, is fast paced and uses a lot of repetition.

2. Sense making

A lot of what I see presented as ‘checking for understanding’ doesn’t actually check students’ understanding. Often teachers only check their ateention or memory and miss out whether or not the students has a scooby about what’s actually happening.

I often see situations were students are paying attnetion, can recall key points, but haven’t made sense of them. If I want to find out whether what’s happening is meaningful to them - and I do - then I need to ask them questions that get them to relate what they do understand to the new stuff they getting to grips with.

There’s little point doing this in a way which is ‘cold’. In fact, for this to be successful they need a lot of warming up. Generally, I go through the process of think, pair, share like so:

• Ask the question

• Ask students to write down what they think on a MWB

• Tell students you’re going to ask them to share ideas with a partner and ask them to feedback what they’ve just heard

• Give students enough time to each speak through their current understanding

• Get them to individually rewrite their answer on the MWB

• Select individuals to share their answers, scaffolding their use of academic language

Throughout this process - often less than five minutes - I’m circulating with my clipboard, jotting down anything note-worthy and monitoring the discussions and instances of writing, intervening where necessary. ‘Sense making’ use open questions, is slower paced and more focused on depth.

Isn’t it the same as ‘cold calling?

Well, yes. And no. It depends what you think cold calling is. Both of the above approaches of teacher-directed questions have similarities: In both cases I want to sample as many students as possible and don’t want to be distracted by the minority who know the answers (or think they do). But they’re also very different. It’s probably helpful to give them different labels which make their different purposes clearer.

So, is it better than cold calling?

Again: yes, no, it depends. I think what matters is twofold. First, common language is useful but we do have to be careful that we’re not unintentionally talking past each other by using the same label but different definitions. Arguably, my labels have a bit more definition built in so may have an advantage, but I’m not naive enough to think they won’t be prone to definitional drift and lethal mutation. Second, we should encourage teachers to think about the problem they’re trying to solve as well as the tool they’re going to use to solve it. This way, all definitions might prove to be a little more robust.