Why I'm Not a Fan of Cold Call

It's done badly more often than it's done well

Here's a common sequence in teaching:

Teacher asks a question. A few students raise their hands. Teacher calls on a student. Student answers the question correctly. Teacher moves on.

What's wrong here? First, the teacher called on a volunteer, so it's not clear whether the other students could answer the question correctly. Maybe only a few students are following along and most of the class is confused. No way to know. And second, since the teacher is only calling on students with their hands raised, the message to students is that if they don't want to participate, they can tune out and pay little attention to the lesson.

This is a problem. We should help this teacher! We should give them some teacher moves to get an accurate sample of the class's understanding, and help them create a culture where students are listening and paying attention.

One common solution that's offered here is to "cold call" students — to call on students whether or not their hand is raised. Cold call can give the teacher a representative sample of student understanding and encourage students to pay attention since they know they might be called on.

I'm not a fan of cold call. This post is about why I don't think cold call should be the first (or second, or third) solution we offer to this teacher.

A note about where I'm coming from. Cold call has existed for a long time but seems to have become popular via the book Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov. Right now I teach at a small rural public school. But I started my teaching career working at two east-coast charter schools very much in the Teach Like a Champion mold. One was part of the charter network that Doug Lemov works for. I've been to Teach Like a Champion trainings, including one specifically on cold call with Doug Lemov. So I'm writing this as someone who has been trained in cold call, and who worked for multiple schools where cold call was encouraged. In my time working in that charter school world I visited about half a dozen schools in the general mold, and observed teachers both at schools I worked for and others. I’ve also observed more than a dozen other types of schools, and over a hundred teachers across all types of schools. This post is based on my observations. I haven’t seen everything, but I think I’ve seen enough to make some decent judgments.

Okay, let's get started.

Cold Call

I want to start with a defense of cold call. In my time working in charter schools I saw a few teachers who had absolutely mastered the cold call. There are a few ingredients I think are important for getting cold call right:

Create a culture of error. It needs to be normal for students to get questions wrong, and to share wrong answers with the group. Students should see it as no big deal, as a learning experience, as something that carries no shame or negative feelings. Students should also see sharing errors as an important part of the learning process

Choose students carefully. Cold call isn’t random. Instead, cold call means intentionally choosing students to answer questions. You might pick an easier question for a student who struggles to help them build confidence, or a harder question for a strong student to stretch them. You might pick an “indicator” student for a check for understanding. If I want to know if the class is with me, I don’t want to pick the strongest student for that question. I want to pick someone where I can say, “if student A gets this right, I can feel reasonably confident the class is following along.”

Be a decent teacher. No way around this one. If students are constantly confused in your class, cold call is going to be a mess. You need to have a bunch of other things working in your classroom to introduce cold call.

Have a strong school culture. Not an absolute requirement, but it’s helpful to have other teachers who use cold call. A culture of accountability across the school and support systems that push students to do their absolute best academically help to set up cold call for success.

Name comes last. This is one of those fundamental things that lots of teachers get wrong. When you cold call, you say the name of the student you’re calling on last. This means that every student in the room expects they might be called on. It’s “What is the solution to 5x = 15…Jimmy?” rather than, “Jimmy, what’s the solution to 5x = 15?”

Finally, while this isn’t a requirement, teaching highly motivated and high-achieving students absolutely helps to make cold call work.

With all these pieces in place, cold call can be a thing of beauty. Students are all involved in the lesson, students are eager to learn from their mistakes, students are interested in each other's ideas. The teacher is constantly asking questions, adjusting the lesson based on student understanding, and there is a ton of learning in the room.

But in my time observing classes, a large majority of teachers using cold call struggled to create this culture. Instead, students felt like the teacher was trying to catch them making a mistake. Or the teacher got into power struggles with students who weren't paying attention. Or there was a tacit agreement between the teacher and some students that they wouldn't be called on and those students could tune out. Or there were snide looks or comments from other students when someone made a mistake. Or there were constant detours in the lesson as the teacher played whack-a-mole with different confused students and the rest of the class looked on. These teachers were trying their best. Some were new, some were experienced, some had been trained many times in cold calling. Across contexts, cold call often created a culture of negativity, pulled time away from the main goal of the class, and didn’t do much to get kids paying attention.

I sometimes hear people who have never seen cold call used well assume that any lesson where the teacher is cold calling must be a tyrannical learning environment, intent on stressing students out and catching them making mistakes. To these people, I would say: it is possible to do cold call well. You should go see a great teacher, working in a strong school culture, who is a master of cold call. But in many cases, your intuition is right. If you hear about cold call and assume that if you were a student in that room, cold call would stress you out and make you bitter at the teacher…well, in many cases, you might be right. I think that with a great teacher working in a great culture, you would see the value in cold call and learn from it. But for a typical teacher, I’m skeptical.

Cold call can be a great tool. My thesis in this post isn't "cold call is evil." My thesis is, “only hearing from students with their hand up is bad, but there are a bunch of other tools you can use to increase participation.”

Alternatives

Here are a bunch of other strategies you can use that serve similar goals:

Mini whiteboards. Give every student a mini whiteboard and a dry-erase marker. Ask a question. Have every student write their answer down. On a signal, every student holds their board up at the same time. This is the single best way to check for understanding. I can see every student’s answer, and tell in seconds whether the whole class is confused, the whole class is ready to move on, I need to check in with three students, or something in between. This also provides accountability for every single student. If any student isn’t participating, I know right away. Mini whiteboards aren’t simple to use. It takes time to build an effective routine and get the timing right. But they pay back that investment many times over.

Choral response. Ask a question, give students time to think, and have all students answer chorally on a signal. Choral response doesn’t work for long answers, and I can’t hear each student’s answer individually. But I still get every student participating, I get a general sense of whether students are with me, and I create some positive energy in the room.

Turn and talk. A classic. Give students a minute to think or write, then have them discuss with a partner. There are lots of variations on a turn and talk. The basic structure gets every student answering the question, is great for questions with longer answers, divergent responses, or explanations of why, and is easy to do. I can listen in on student conversations and quickly gather much more data than calling on a single student. I can ask a student or students with an important answer to share their ideas with the class. I can also often use that time to quickly check in with a student or two who is confused.

Stop and jot. This doesn’t have one common name but it’s a way underrated teaching strategy. Ask a few questions, and have students write their answers on a handout or in a notebook. I often do this with one question pre-selected as the one I will look at. I give students a minute or two to get going, then circulate around the room looking at answers to that target question. Similar to mini whiteboards, I can gather data on every single student, but with more flexibility for students to solve longer problems or work at their own pace.

Also, all of these can be combined together in different ways. Ask a question on mini whiteboards, then have students turn and talk about their answers. Use choral response as a quick reminder of a vocab word before a stop and jot. Have students answer a few questions on paper, then have them write their answer to one question on a mini whiteboard to sample the room. Variety is the spice of math class. Having a lot of different strategies to surface student thinking means a teacher can adapt to different classes, content, and contexts.

One core principle of good teaching is to ask lots of questions, and make sure all students are answering them. These four are, in my opinion, the best tools to make that happen in any classroom, any subject, any level.

Here’s my basic point: there are lots of teachers who only call on students with their hands up, while most students aren’t paying attention. I think that these four strategies are underused, and a typical teacher would spend their time well incorporating these four strategies into their teaching.

Why These Alternatives Are Better Than Cold Call

Here are a few benefits of these strategies:

Better data. Cold call gives better data about student understanding than taking a hand. That’s one of the main arguments for it. But it gives exactly one additional data point: one random student rather than a self-selected student. Mini whiteboards and stop and jot can give data on every student in the room. While with the other two strategies it isn’t easy to see or hear every student’s answer, I can get more information than hearing from a single student. Each tool has its strengths and weaknesses, but each gives me better data to act on than calling on a single student.

More student involvement. That additional data also comes from additional participation. The goal of cold call is to make sure every student is thinking about the questions I ask. But all that thinking still happens in their heads. In these strategies, every student is answering the questions I ask, either verbally or in writing. Only hearing from one student at a time can suck the energy from a room. It can feel like having a series of one-on-one conversations in front of the class. Getting every student participating adds energy to the room, and creates the collective effervescence that drives classroom learning.

Positivity. Seeing or hearing every student’s answer creates opportunities for praise and recognition that are much more powerful than hearing from one student at a time. Hearing the class respond chorally together, or the buzz of a strong turn-and-talk, helps teachers to recognize great thinking and create positive energy in the classroom. These moments build momentum and are self-perpetuating.

Privacy. These strategies also make students who aren’t paying attention less visible. Calling on students who aren’t paying attention is the kryptonite of cold call. It broadcasts to the class that someone is tuned out. Without a really intentional culture, that can spread and ruin everything you’re trying to build. With all of these strategies, I can usually tell if a student isn’t participating, but it’s less visible to the rest of the class. I can have a conversation with that student or follow up in a different way without making it a public issue. Another big challenge of cold call is dealing with wrong answers. Teachers shouldn’t be afraid of wrong answers; uncovering and addressing mistakes is an important part of teaching. But there’s a benefit to keeping wrong answers relatively private. Making a mistake in front of the class leads to a delicate balancing act, trying to help that student while also maintaining the attention of the class. Teachers should find opportunities to share mistakes and help the class learn from them. But the four strategies above prioritize privacy first. I can observe or listen in, and then choose an answer or group of answers to share with the class. I can be thoughtful about who is prepared to share a mistake with the class, and who needs anonymity.

Elementary Teachers

I bet many high school teachers reading this post are thinking that all this sounds like a lot. If you want to see these tools — mini whiteboards, choral response, turn and talk, stop and jot — in action, go visit an elementary classroom. Many elementary teachers are masters of this stuff. Elementary teachers know that they can’t take young students’ attention for granted. They often have tons of tools to assess the room and keep students with them. If you can, go find a few elementary classrooms to observe. I always learn a ton when I get to see elementary teachers at work. We secondary teachers have a ton to learn from teachers of younger grades. Don’t be elitist and think you’re better than them because you know calculus or whatever.

It’s Only Good Teaching If It Works

Cold call makes a certain amount of logical sense. We’ve all experienced classrooms, as students or as teachers, where there was a group of students who mostly ignored the teacher. Cold call seems like a simple change: teach like you were teaching before, but call on random students rather than only students who have their hand up. The thing is, using cold call well is way harder than that. I’m sure I have readers who use cold call well. No criticism here, you do you. And if you’re convinced cold call is the right solution for you, give it a shot.

But good teaching doesn’t mean doing things that make logical sense. Good teaching means doing things that work, in real classrooms with real students. My experience is that, in many many classrooms, cold call just doesn’t work as well as it sounds. I know lots of teachers who have spent tons of effort working on cold call and struggle to make it work. I’m one of them. It’s just never panned out for me. In my experience, the four strategies I described are underused, not too hard to learn, and less likely to backfire. So you do you, take what I say with a grain of salt. But there are a ton of consultants out there who can make cold call sound like a great idea when they’re tweeting or running staff professional development. There are way fewer teachers who can walk into a random school with typical students and make cold call work day in and day out. The proof is in the pudding, and my advice is to pick a different pudding.