EDUC 350 Field Notes- Chapter 4 Engaging Students in Your Lessons

Cold Call

Call and Response

Pepper

Wait Time

Everybody Writes

Vegas

Ms. Phalen always cold calls on her students to either read a portion of articles
or answer questions. She differentiates who she calls on based on their ability
to answer scaffold questions.
When Ms. Phalen wants the class to answer a question collectively instead of
cold calling on one person she will start the question with Class, This way
the students know that they are all expected to shout out the answer to the
question.
When Ms. Phalen wanted to review the previous class discussion on Gandhi she
began the class with pepper questions. She quickly asked questions that
required brief answers for the entire class or select students to answer. This
way she was able to refresh their memories on the lesson as well as assess
where the students are at in their understanding of Gandhi.
Ms. Phalen uses wait time when she cold calls on a student. Certain students,
like Alicia or Noah, are capable of producing great responses to questions but
take a minute to contemplate the question and come up with a response. Ms.
Phalen encourages the class to patiently wait for some think time which allows
the students to think over their answer and fosters a patient and respectful
classroom culture.
I was teaching a lesson on Maoism. We were reading an article and filling in a
summary worksheet. After reading through certain sections the class would
pause to fill in one section of the summary sheet then we would share our
responses and come up with a collective response. We would wait until each
student had written their summary.
At the end of the unit on India, Ms. Phalen had a cultural celebration. The
students presented their unit projects while enjoying Indian food and doing
henna tattoos. The students had looked forward to this celebration so Ms.
Phalen used it as a motivator throughout the unit.

Which techniques from Chapter 4 have you observed? Explain 1-2 techniques and how they helped engage your students.

I think that cold calling along with wait time is an effective way to formatively assess students
while teaching. Purposefully, but seemingly randomly, calling on students allows me to gauge
what each student knows or needs further instruction on. Wait time can be necessary for a
student to thoroughly contemplate the question asked, especially if it is a complex or multifaceted question. Rushing a student to answer a question is not a good way to check for