How do I know all students are paying attention?

This post is also on Substack. As a reminder, I’m planning to stop posting here in the short to medium term so I’d be really grateful if you could subscribe over there.

Thanks, David

In Attention, Meaning & Mastery I wrote that all teachers need to answer four questions every lesson:

1. How do all know that all students are paying attention?
2. How do I know that all students have made sense of what has been taught?
3. How do I know all students are mastering the skills I want them to learn?
4. How can I do all this in a way which is inclusive and results in all students experiencing success?

This post will go into more detail on the first question. 

It’s become increasingly obvious to me that teachers often don’t know whether their students are paying attention. When watching a lesson I’ll regularly ask the student I’m sitting next to what the teacher just said and they’ll apologise and say they don’t know. The classroom the teacher occupies can be very different to the one their students are in. In the teacher’s classroom there is a sharp focus on on the content they want students to learn but possibly a fairly hazy awareness of that students may be thinking or doing. This situation can be neatly summed up with this Gary Larson cartoon:

As I’ve become more attuned to this problem, I’ve developed the habit of asking students to repeat what I’ve just said. It so common for students to admit they weren’t listening that I now find it almost surprising when they can tell me what I just said!

And if you suspect students might not be listening to you, the likelihood that they listen to each other becomes even more remote. I now routinely ask students to repeat what their classmates have just said and it’s really clear that when a student speaks, everyone else tends to act as if they have tacit permission to switch off for the duration.

Our default expectation should be that even the most conscientious students will lose focus repeatedly throughout a lesson and have a series of moves prepared which we can deploy in anticipation of and in mitigation against this eventuality.

With that in mind, here is a list of such moves:

Closed questions

Teachers sometimes get told they should avoid closed questions and only ask open questions. Both have their place but when checking that students are listening, asking them a closed question is much more efficient. For instance:

Teacher: A subordinate clause is part of a sentence that adds additional information but doesn’t make sense on its own. What’s a subordinate clause? [pause] Samina?

Samina: Er… is it part of a sentence?

Teacher: It is, yes. It’s part of a sentence that adds additional information but doesn’t make sense on its own. What’s a subordinate clause? Kyle?

And so on. I’d also vary the question form and ask, What do we call the part of a sentence that adds additional information but doesn’t make sense on its own?

NB. Closed questions are not great at telling us whether a student understands something but that’s not why we’re using it here.

Repetition

The closed question routine is very similar to the art of repetition. If we want to build a classroom culture where students understand that they may be asked to repeat what has just been said at anytime we will ensure that more students are paying more attention, more of the time. In this case, a typical interaction might look something like this:

Teacher: Who says, “So foul and fair a day I have not seen”? Shannon?

Shannon: Um, I don’t know, sorry.

Teacher: OK, not to worry. I’m going to ask another student the same question and then ask you to tell me what their answer was so listen really carefully. Who says, “So foul and fair a day I have not seen”? Daisy?

Daisy: Was it Macbeth?

Teacher: Yes, it was Macbeth, well done. Shannon, who says, “So foul and fair a day I have not seen”?

Shannon: Macbeth

Teacher: Excellent. What did Shannon just say? Alfie?

And repeat. Obviously time is limited and you can’t do this indefinitely but I find it makes a huge difference to future lessons if teachers spend time building a culture where attention is required and valued.

As you can see, asking students to repeat is a great way of dealing with them saying “I don’t know.” Sometimes they genuinely don’t know (but, as you’ll see below, this is because they’ve not been paying attention,) sometimes they’re overwhelmed by anxiety and their mind has gone blank and sometimes they just can’t be bothered to play along. You might think you know which of these is true for any given student but you really don’t. Teachers need a response which deals with all these possibilities in a way which is non-confrontational but clearly signals that participation is required. Asking students to repeat a classmate’s answer is the least invasive, most supportive way of making sure attention is refocused.

Cold call

As you have no doubt noticed, both of these approaches are predicated on the teacher selecting who is going to answer. There are a couple of potential drawbacks to cold calling students which we need to be aware of. One is the issue of sampling. Too often I see teachers conclude that all students are paying attention after asking questions of just one or two students. Our rule of thumb should be that we need to ask a wide enough sample for this conclusion to be warranted, but that takes up valuable lesson time. Secondly, cold calling can prevent students who want to participate from showing what they know and this can lead to them feeling demotivated.

My personal rule for cold calling is that the questions I ask are never actually cold. When checking for attention I only ever ask students something I’ve already covered in a lesson. The only reason the question might feel cold to a student is that they’ve zoned out. I think it’s crucial not to get irritated by this. Maintaining attention is hard. All students are fighting against entropy and I need to make the act of refocussing normal and minimally intrusive. That said, sometimes we ask a student a question because we just know they’ve lost focus. Occasionally I’m wrong on this – some students can comfortably look out of the window, doodle on their whiteboard and still follow what’s happening in the room, but most can’t.

Mini whiteboard routines

Mini whiteboards (MWBs) are one of the best tools in a teachers’ arsenal. They definitely come with some downsides (they require maintenance and a regular supply of new pens) but, aside from investing in technological alternatives, they provide the single best way for teachers to know whether all students are paying attention. They also get around both of the downsides to cold calling discussed above.

Here’s how I use MWBs to check attention:

1. Pose my question based on something already taught during the lessons. E.g. Complete the following quote: “So f _ _ _ and f _ _ _ a d_ _ I h _ _ _ n _ _ s _ _ _.”
2. Students are given an appropriate amount of time to write out their answer on their MWB
3. I go through the 1,2, 3 show me routine* which I narrate like so:

OK. 1. 1 means pens down… Great, I can see most pens are down. Wonderful. 2. 2 means hold your board in both hands face down, hovering over your desk, like this. [demonstrate] Face down. Both hand please…. Great. 3. 3 means holding your board in front of you in both hands with the answer facing you. Like this…. Only you should be able to see your answer…. A few boards need to turn round. Perfect. Now, show me…

I carry on narrating this until everyone can do everything without reminders. This enables me to see whether everyone in the room has completed the task to my satisfaction and everyone in the room has had an opportunity to demonstrate what they know.

* I usually see this done as a ‘3,2,1 show me’ routine which for is a missed opportunity because you lose the rhyme.

Circulating the room

While students are writing on their MWBs, I will be circulating the room, checking what they are writing. If a student isn’t writing I can intervene, but, if I’ve asked them to do something we’ve already covered, this shouldn’t be too much of an issue. The main reason for circulating when I’m checking attention is to ensure everyone is a) doing what is expected and b) is aware that I’m checking. Too often teachers stand at the front of the room during these precious seconds and, although they can take a reasonable guess about what’s happening, it will be less effective than if they occupy a position where they can see the students’ MWBs.

Messy markbooks

I have become a complete convert to carrying a clipboard with a copy of the class seating plan in every lesson I teach. Without this I know I’m going to forget to do things, miss opportunities and allow mistakes and misconception to go unchecked.

Visualisers (I do)

Depending on what’s being taught, visualisers can be an invaluable way of focussing students’ attention. That said, I see a lot of lessons where the teacher is busy at their desk and doesn’t notice that students have lost focus. Perhaps the most effective way out of this is to be able to use your visualiser while standing.

This set up belongs to James Hyde at Four Dwellings Academy and is a joy to use. The lectern comes in at about £50 and James has fixed a magnet to the base of his very fine visualiser to ensure a steady, reliable platform on which to write.

This is a great start but is still insufficient. We also need to regularly intersperse our visualiser use with the techniques discussed above. One of my favourite ways to use the visualiser is for teachers to have their own copy of the class’s exercise book in which they complete all the work students are expected to do. It makes it very easy for students to see where and how to underline, write the title, lay out a page or whatever it is you want them to learn is important in presenting their work. It also means that anyone who has been absent can use the teacher’s book to catch up with stuff they’ve missed.

I hope two things from all this are clear:

1. These techniques are not so much a menu from which you select your favourites but are an interlocking and mutually interdependent approach to getting better at answering the question how do I know all students are paying attention?
2. All of these techniques could (and should) be deployed differently to answer the other questions teachers need to ask and answer of their lessons.

As always, if you’d be interested in me modelling this in your school with your students, please get in touch.