Ensuring
high think/high participation ratio in English
Background:
I’ve had
cause to revisit Doug Lemov’s Teach Like A Champion (TLAC) over
the past few weeks. Every time I read material from Lemov’s book, I come across
something new. In this instance, his work around ensuring a ‘high think/high
participation’ ratio in our classrooms has really struck a chord. I’ve read
about this before but have never really considered how this could apply
directly to an English lesson until now.
This
blog, as always, is just a series of thoughts and musings and so I’ve detailed my
initial responses to Lemov’s ideas and explained what I’ve been trialing in an
attempt to foster buy in from all students in my classroom.
Firstly,
a truncated explanation as to what ‘high think/high participation’ ratio is and
then a brief on how I’ve used this idea and adapted it to suit English lessons.
Apologies to Lemov for butchering what he so brilliantly and clearly explains.
You can find Lemov’s better explanation on p.266 of TLAC 3.0.
In TLAC 3.0, Lemov discusses the idea of a ‘zone of desired student behaviour.’ He says:
‘Just because we ask questions doesn’t mean students answer them... or think much about them… Ideally everyone in a given class would think rigorously about every question you ask and attempt to answer it in their minds. This is a different activity from answering the question and sharing their thinking aloud. Answering and thinking are separate variables.’ (TLAC 3.0, Lemov, p.269/270)
Let’s
think of this 'zone of desired behaviour' as ‘the dream’, the thing we all want our students to be doing in
our lessons. They’re switched on, engaged and always participating, verbally or
non-verbally. The idea of thinking and answering as two separate variables is
an important one; after all, just because a student puts up their hand and
answers a question, doesn’t mean they have thought about what they want to say.
Giving students thinking time is vital. In every job interview where I’ve been
asked what makes an outstanding lesson, I’ve always answered something along
the lines of ‘a lesson that makes students think and think hard’ because that’s
what I truly believe. ‘Doing’ does not always equal learning but thinking can
mean they’re well on their way.
As you can see, our students could fall into four points in a lesson (TLAC 3.0, Lemov, p.266, 267):
1. High Participation
Ratio/High Think Ratio: Responding to questions through writing, verbal probing
questions and cold calling.
2. Low Participation
Ratio/Low Think Ratio: First answer that pops into students’ heads accepted as
the only answer.
3. High Participation
Ratio/Low Think Ratio: Whole class call and response. Little ‘desirable
difficulty’.
4. High Think Ratio/Low
Participation Ratio: Dusting off the deepest questions about the nature of a subject and having profound conversations with 2 or 3 students in the class.
If we consider the ratio spectrum alongside our zone of desired student behaviours, we can see that ‘the
dream’ can be found at POINT 1: everyone thinking and everyone participating. I think
in English it can be particularly easy to fall into POINT 4. I’ve quite often
fallen into the trap of digging deep into analysis with students, discussing
high concept ideas with two or three of them and then realising that others in
the class have been unintentionally excluded from the conversation because they’re
unable to navigate the complexities of what we’ve been thinking about. Some are
unable to think of ideas and interpretations of texts themselves or they struggle
to understand what’s in front of them. Having read this part of TLAC 3.0, then,
I’ve been thinking a lot about the following question: How can I ensure a high participation ratio/high think ratio in my class?
Applying to English
Before I begin discussing how I
think this could be applied to English, I must stress this method is just one
way of trying to reach POINT 1 on the ratio. It is not the way. This
method needs some work. It needs to be refined and tweaked, but here is what I
did as it stands.
One of my favourite things as an
English teacher is discussing and exploring a range of interpretations that
students discover for themselves. Some of the ideas my students come up with
are so strong that I make a note to use them with the next year group who will
encounter the text I’m teaching. Yet when I think about the ratio of students
contributing to those conversations vs those who are not, I realise that I’m
not meeting a high think/high participation ratio as much as I would like. Why might this be? Is it because students can’t be bothered? Is it that they’re not
gripped by the story? Or is it because when I encourage students to think of
their own ideas and find that coveted ‘original interpretation’, I don’t model
how to do it? Something like that is hard to dissect and explore with students because
how can one truly model the genesis and nurturing of an original idea? That’s a
question (and perhaps a blog?) for another time, written by those with minds
far brighter than my own.
The process
When I think about the way in
which I try and draw out interpretations in English, I’ve always pushed for
original ideas, yet a lot of our students find this difficult. I wanted to find
a way to bring these students into the conversation to avoid hitting POINT 4 in
the spectrum. As a result, I began mulling over the approach of explicitly teaching
interpretations (which is perhaps the most controversial element of this blog;
I know there are lots of people who would disagree with such a method). This
is something I’ve done in the past, particularly by presenting students with
ideas by literary critics, yet I considered how I could formalise this to ensure a high think/high participation ratio. Of course, I wanted to
avoid just giving students an interpretation to learn and regurgitate. Instead,
I wanted them to do something with these ideas. I wanted them to think
hard about them, to challenge them, to argue and dissect them, to add to
them. Here’s what I did.
Having read and ascertained
understanding of the final part of Stave Two in A Christmas Carol, I
asked my students ‘Who is Belle?’. As a key question for the past two lessons, inferences
I would make around student understanding would be gained by whether they could
answer the question or not. What I didn’t want to see was something like ‘Belle
is Scrooge’s fiancée’ or ‘Belle is the woman who breaks up with Scrooge’
although this is what I was expecting and is partly what I got. Instead I was
looking for something more detailed, something that had clearly been thought
about.
I explained to my class the
concept of characters as conscious constructs, the fact they are there for a
reason: to help writers deliver their message. I asked students what message
Dickens might be trying to convey through Belle, gave wait time, and then cold
called, receiving mixed responses. Knowing my class, I could preempt that this is
what I’d get, so I then presented them with the following three
interpretations:
I walked students through each idea and got them
to think individually about which one they thought was right. Anyone familiar
with A Christmas Carol would surely agree that all interpretations are
correct as they are all rooted in the text, yet this approach was a conscious
decision, designed to instigate debate and discussion. Students were under
strict instructions. They could only choose one interpretation when I posed the following
question: ‘Which one do you agree with the most?’
I asked students to write the letter of the interpretation they agreed with on their whiteboard and to hold them up at the same time. There was an
array of responses and I narrated what I could see (‘We have a lot of interpretation A over here, some people disagreeing with a mixture of B and C
at the back of the room’) so students could think about what others had said.
Next, I asked students to speak to the person sitting next
to them so they could explain why they chose the interpretation they did. The
overall aim was to try and convince the other that their chosen answer was
right. If they both chose the same interpretation, let’s say A, I asked one
student to discuss what someone arguing point B would say and the other to
argue for point C with the aim of pushing their thinking further and helping to
avoid POINT 2 on the spectrum.
After discussion, I said to students they could change their
option if they wished. Lots did, lots didn’t. I then asked students which
interpretation they finally selected and why, offering wait time to ensure all students
were thinking before cold calling at the last second. (On a separate note, I
find ‘open’ cold calling a really powerful way of helping those who might be
anxious to contribute, feel less threatened. By this, I mean saying things like,
‘Can you start to speak to me about what you discussed with your partner, Joe?’
The phrase ‘start to speak to me…’ tells Joe that I’m not expecting him to
cover everything and invites him into the conversation with any point he is
comfortable with making. Another Lemov method!)
Once I finished cold calling, I invited hands up for those
who wanted to share their ideas but hadn’t been selected. Out of these
conversations came elaboration of the three interpretations, brand new points
and a strong, rigorous discussion around Belle’s function in the novella. With
James Britton’s ‘reading and writing float on a sea of talk’ mantra, we then
used the discussion to write our ideas down in our books, again ensuring POINT 1 was met on the ratio spectrum. As an aside, it's important to tell students that all the interpretations are correct at the end of the task, even though this is subliminally implied through the task itself, which isn't 'Which of these is correct?' but instead 'Which of these do you agree with the most?'
An approach like this could work for any subject, but why do I think this worked so well for English?
- Firstly, a selection of interpretations presented to students
who struggle to consider their own ideas allowed everyone to engage in thinking
and conversation.
- The task required students to think beyond their first
response. Asking students to argue for ideas they didn’t initially agree with worked
extremely well and really helped distinguish between the separate variables of
thinking and answering.
- Out of these prepared interpretations came the genesis of
new ideas through debate and discussion.
- Everyone was participating.
I’ve used the idea as a retrieval exercise too, moving
beyond interpretations and focusing on quotations instead:
And here's an example from another lesson:
The method I've discussed in this blog isn't an original idea. Instead, it is an amalgamation of thoughts from educationalists I truly admire. I hope, however, there is something here that you might find useful for the contexts in which you teach.
Stuart
(@SPryke2)