In their book, Made To Stick, authors Chip and Dan Heath describe the story of Jane Elliott.
Jane was a third-grade teacher on April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King was assassinated.
Struggling to explain the tragedy to her students, Jane decided to try something unusual. She separated her class by eye color.
She placed the brown-eyed [...]
Calling out is a momentum killer of the highest order and can turn a well-planned lesson into a halting mess.
But that isn’t the only reason why you should require your students to raise their hand.
Here are a few more:
Calling out is unfair
Every student has a right to participate, not just those who are more assertive. [...]
The reason your students don’t follow directions well is because they mentally move on before you finish giving them.
Once they think they know what you’re asking of them, they’re gone.
Sometimes you can see this happening right in front of you.
It’s hard to miss.
They’ll push back their chairs and stand up, or turn and talk to [...]
Before every shot, professional golfers follow a very specific procedure, unique to them, called a pre-shot routine.
From the moment they pull a club out of their bag to the moment they take their swing, they follow the exact same set of movements.
Like a well-choreographed dance, these pre-shot movements are repeated dozens of times throughout a [...]
What do you do when your students perform an everyday procedure, like entering the classroom, in a way that doesn’t meet your expectations?
How do you respond when they appear to ignore your instructions about how you want a classroom procedure completed?
Less effective teachers typically respond in one of two ways.
They either let it go and [...]
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