The theme of so much of my recent blogging and discussions in schools has been the very real challenge of teaching everyone in a class effectively – simultaneously.  I still don’t think the details of this issue get enough attention. 

Responsive teaching suggests a simple sequence: 

• First, Teacher explains and models some new material. 
• Then, Students engage in a process that involves using that new material, helping them make sense of it and practise it.
• Then, Teacher gathers some form of information (data?) to check to see how well that has gone, gauging the degree of success. Very obviously, this requires students to generate that information in a form the teacher can engage with – (we can’t read minds!)
• Crucially, Teacher then responds to the data they gathered, addressing issues that arise by re-teaching some of the material, redirecting Student practice or moving on to the next phase. 
• Finally, Teacher evaluates this loop and decides whether to go around again or move on. 

(See also Formative Action). 

This all feels very intuitive at small scale – it makes total sense when you are teaching one student: you interact with them in an iterative fashion, back and forth, checking their understanding at multiple intervals.  You hear them explain things or answer questions; you see their work as it develops; you check their answers.  

But when you scale up to a whole class, this is all massively more complicated.  How do you check in on each individual students’ learning simultaneously?  There are two main options: 

• You check each of them yourself. 
• You train them to check themselves.

1. You check each of them yourself. 

For the teacher to do the checking – across a whole class – there are only two techniques available that are both immediate and universal. 

Circulate and check:  walking around, student to student, checking their work one by one.   This is easy when the work is visible at distance – eg PE or dance, sometimes drama and art.   But for anything in books, this requires making intentional loops around the class scanning student books.  (This is where Doug Lemov, David Didau and others have promoted using a trusty old clipboard with a seating plan.. being systematic needs some kind of system). Here, in TLAC style, you are hunting, not fishing… ie you. are looking to see that a specific learning point has been secured rather than just grazing over their work to see generally how they’re doing.

Show Me Boards:  every student reveals their answers simultaneously on a white board. This works well for a range of shorter answers – bullet points, short answers with working – and allows the teacher to see from a distance.  You can do this multiple times in quick succession and then follow up with individuals to hear them explain their reasoning..

Then there are techniques that are immediate but require sampling: 

• Cold Calling:  you choose who to answer verbally and it could be anyone. This is also be useful after a Think Pair Share exchange or after using Show Me Boards.
• Show Calling:  you select students to share their written work – via a visualiser or by reading it out. They will know in advance so prepare their work knowing it might be shared.

These two sampling techniques involve every student in thinking and trying to make sense of the ideas, which is important; they are powerful for that reason.  However, you can’t see or hear more than a one response at a time and, to sustain a meaningful flow of ideas and hold attention, there’s a limit to how many students you can sample for any specific question – even if across a lesson or a day (in primary) you called every student.  

(Arguably you could ask everyone to put their hand up if they got an answer right – but that doesn’t tell you want they put as their version of the answer or what the wrong answers are. So I haven’t included it here. )

Beyond the classroom, there are two obvious techniques which are universal but delayed: 

• Collecting in books for marking 
• Collecting in tests for marking. 

These processes definitely allow you to see every student’s work, in some detail. However, there is the obvious delay or one or more days before you can return to feedback cycle.  You can generate long-run responsiveness but not the in-the-moment responsiveness that is so vital.  There is also the issue that, in marking books and tests, you end up tackling multiple learning points – it’s hard to tackle each of them for every student even after you give the books back.  

2. You train them to check themselves.

Given the challenges for teachers to check every student in an immediate manner, this set of techniques involves the students as agents of their own learning – as described in the 4^th and 5^th elements of Dylan Wiliam et al’s five  formative assessment strategies:  

• Students check their own work: 
• Students check each other’s work: 

These methods do the job of revealing students’ knowledge gaps to them – provided they are trained in how to check their work against some knowledge resources, exemplars and criteria lists, the mark schemes, the answers.  However the teacher still then needs to find out how this went.  In some circumstances, this works well – for example when students can give themselves a score and teachers can find out where the marks were lost or where answers were wrong in real time during the lesson. 

What’s the problem with all this? 

The question I often raise is that, faced with the challenge of this, too often teachers just don’t try enough of the immediate and universal techniques.  I’d say the most common diet of checking is real-time sampling of a few answers (not even always by cold calling) followed by a reliance on universal book or test checking later.  This allows countless learning issues to slip by either unnoticed or un-tackled or with feedback loops seriously delayed.

I meet plenty of teachers who don’t really check in on everyone at all – they don’t really try to: they don’t circulate around the whole class as an absolute routine, don’t use show-me boards and don’t use cold calling or systematic self-checking routines.   My question to them is: so how do you know how every student is doing whilst you are teaching? The answer is that they don’t. They are essentially hoping students are doing ok in the moment, relying on checking their learning through book checks or tests later on.  Often this is supplemented by a liberal smattering of the ‘wing and a prayer’ question set:

• Is everyone clear about that?
• Does anyone have any problems?
• Did that make sense to everyone ?

 All this works to a degree but is very high risk -especially for vulnerable learners who are definitely struggling during the lesson – and are very unlikely to say so.   For some teachers, the corner-cut version is a pretty deep habit and requires a fairly fundamental mental re-wiring to develop routines around real-time universal checking.  

My feeling is that it would be good to see this placed more firmly at the centre of CPD and coaching discussions: to have in mind the need to maximise universal checking and immediate checking. This would involve extensive use of the techniques that combine both: show-me boards and circulating to check. But, for lots of reasons including the pace and rhythm of any instructional exchange, they can be supplemented by the others.