Selecting Non-Volunteers in Explicit Teaching

Why teachers should randomly select students to respond to questions … and ignore the hand-wavers

Students who are paying attention are, by definition, on task, and more likely to attract teacher praise. This is why as teachers we find ourselves calling upon those with hands raised to get the lesson flowing smoothly: It is unlikely hand-wavers will behave inappropriately or pose serious discipline problems. However, by calling upon volunteers, we ignore the potential lack of understanding and potential disruption in other parts of the room (the non volunteers).

After all, much of the behaviour that disrupts learning occurs because of students who are not engaged in the lesson (Parsonson, 2012). Any strategy that increases whole-class engagement, then, will contribute to successful learning, and to a more positive classroom climate.

Direct / Explicit Instruction

For many decades, I have seen direct or explicit instruction feature within special education settings, but increasingly the effectiveness of such instructional principles has led to their adoption in mainstream primary and secondary schools. While different models of explicit instruction include various components, the following elements are consistently present:

1.     A brief review at the beginning of the lesson to confirm prior learning or prerequisite skills

2.     A clear statement of the new lesson goal or learning intention

3.     Explicit demonstration, explanation or modeling of the content, in which complex skills are broken down, sequenced and presented logically

4.     A highly interactive learning environment as each step in the learning process is monitored through questioning and feedback

5.     Opportunities for students to engage with the content or practise the skill under the guidance of the teacher to build accuracy and confidence

6.     Opportunities for students to engage with the content or practise the skill independently

7.     Review of new learning

It is the fourth point that I wish to expand upon here: why, when monitoring understanding, randomly selecting students to respond to questions is more effective than calling on volunteers.

Non-Volunteers

Randomly selecting students to respond when questioning is a core component of Hollingsworth’s and Ybarra’s (2009) Check for Understanding (CFU) process, which is used to monitor student understanding after the explicit teaching of each key point. This is critical for a number of reasons. First, if teachers only respond to volunteers, they are monitoring the understanding of about 20% of students, usually the higher-achievers (p. 35). Randomisation ensures that the learning of a larger sample of students is being monitored. Calling on three students to check for understanding after each key point is recommended, more if the point you are checking is particularly important. Hollingsworth and Ybarra recommend the “popsticks in a jar” strategy, whereby each popstick has a student’s name on it, is selected at random, and replaced after being used to ensure that any student could be selected again. In addition, sampling a larger proportion of students assesses the effectiveness of teaching more accurately.

Randomised questioning also increases student engagement in the lesson and helps sustain attention (Cummings Hlas, Neyers & Molitor, 2019). If only those whose hands are raised are called upon, other students have little reason to pay close attention – and attention is where all learning begins. If students are not paying attention, incoming sensory information cannot be processed and stored in long-term memory for later retrieval. Learning cannot take place because there is a blockage at the very beginning of the sequence.

And while we are on the topic of questioning, nominating a student before the question is asked increases the attention of that student, but almost guarantees that every other student tunes out. Asking the question of the whole class before selecting the student is much more likely to maintain engagement.

Reading Aloud

The principle of random selection should also apply when calling on students to read aloud. Moving predictably along a row, or around a table, of students increases the likelihood that students who have had their turn, or who are some distance away from the action, will tune out. And there is nothing particularly magical about asking students to read the same amount – a paragraph or a page. Varying the amount you ask students to read is another way to use the power of randomisation. One child might read two paragraphs, and the following student might only have read two sentences before another student is asked to carry on. Students may even have to pick up in the middle of a sentence! In my experience, students enjoy the lack of predictability, and remain engaged so they are not caught out. An added benefit of interspersing very short contributions is that you have the opportunity to hear more students read, and can differentiate more for the range of ability in many classrooms. 

Embedding The Practice

Advice to ignore students with their hands raised is not to suggest that teachers should spend any time trying to stop students raising their hands. It is such a well-practised and therefore automatic response that the chances of stopping it are slim. Teachers should simply ignore raised hands and continue to choose students at random. (There are contexts in which hand raising is appropriate: for example, after calling randomly on students as part of the CFU process, teachers might call on volunteers to respond to a higher order question that expands the topic.)

In summary, randomly selecting students to answer questions:

·      Helps teachers assess the learning of a wider group of students

·      Provides a more systematic way of assessing teaching effectiveness

·      Promotes attention

·      Helps sustain engagement

·      Reduces off-task behaviour and discipline problems

So … Ignore the hand-wavers!

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About our Guest Contributor

Dr Deslea Konza began her working life as a primary school teacher in NSW, and after training in the education of deaf, blind and deaf-blind children, taught in special education for ten years. She joined the University of Wollongong as a lecturer, then senior lecturer in Special Education and finally as Director of Primary Education. In 1999, she completed her PhD in the effective teaching of students with attention and learning problems.

Deslea moved to Edith Cowan University in Perth as Associate Professor of Language and Literacy, and Director of the Fogarty Learning Centre. Her major focus during this period was on developing classroom teachers’ knowledge of reading development and how to teach struggling readers. She led more than 20 major literacy research projects in metropolitan, regional and remote areas across Australia.

Deslea is an expert adviser to ACARA, and has served on the editorial board of 12 national and international journals on literacy, special education and educational research. She has published books on reading and classroom management and authored or co-authored more than 100 other publications, including book chapters, peer-refereed journal articles, peer-refereed conference papers, invited monographs, research reports, curriculum resources and audio-visual resources on reading assessment. Deslea now works directly with education sectors across Australia as a reading consultant.

References

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Archer, A. L. & Hughes, C. A. (2011). Explicit Instruction: Effective and Efficient Teaching. NY: Guilford Press.

Cummings Hlas, C., Neyers, K., & Molitor, S. (2019). Measuring student attention in the second language classroom. Language Teaching Research, 23(1), 107-125     DOI: 10.1177/1362168817713766

Hollingsworth, J. & Ybarra, S. (2009, 2017). Explicit Direct instruction: the power of the well-crafted, well-taught lesson. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Inc.      DOI:10.4135/9781452218977

Parsonson, B. (2012). Evidence-based Classroom Behaviour Management Strategies. Kairaranga, 13(1), 16-23.

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