Call and Respond is where the teacher says the first half of a statement (The formula to work out the area of a triangle is…), and the students complete the statement in unison (… half base multiplied by perpendicular height).
Diagnosis
Please complete this exercise:
- Write one reason to use Call and Respond in a lesson
- Write another reason to use Call and Respond in a lesson
- Write a reason to use Call and Respond in a lesson that no one else will think of
- Write a reason not to use Call and Respond in a lesson
If you are doing this exercise with a colleague, compare your answers.
Evidence
Call and Respond was absent from my teaching for 15 years. It sounded awkward, corner and a bit culty, and to be honest, I didn’t see what purpose it served. However, I have seen enough high-performing teachers use Call and Respond to try it, and it now plays an important part in my teaching toolkit.
There are a number of reasons to consider using Call and Respond:
- Compared to other means of participation, Call and Respond is quick to use and requires no equipment
- It is good for recall
- It is particularly good for the pronunciation of technical vocabulary
- It can help prepare students for Cold Call by getting them used to answering verbally as part of a crowd
- As corny as it may sound, Call and respond can help develop a sense of belonging. It can become something that a group of students and a teacher do together. It is our thing.
There’s also interesting research into Call and Respond that suggests it can:
- Lead to higher levels of active student responding
- Promote highesr levels of on-task behavior
- Generally improve student engagement
- Improve vocabulary acquisition
- Support the learning of students with liabilities who consistently responded more to teacher questions when they were required to respond chorally compared to when they had to raise their hand and volunteer to respond individually
But, like any teaching strategy, there are certain things we should strive to do and another thing we should strive not to do to give Call and Respond the best chance of being effective.
Let’s dive in…
Solution steps
Part 1: Call and Respond pedagogy
1. Use Explain, Frame, Reframe
I once watched a lesson where the teacher used Call and Respond to help students remember the definition of discrete data. It went like this:
- Teacher: Discrete data is countable. Now your turn, discrete data is…
- Students: Countable
- Teacher: Again, discrete data is…
- Students: Countable
Later in the lesson, I asked three students what type of data was countable. None could tell me.
This was because students had only had to repeat the final part of the statement, and so had nothing to connect this to. In a sense, they were acti ng like parrots, just repeating a phrase on command with no meaning attached to it.
The solution is to do what I call: Explain, Frame, Reframe.
In the example above, it would go like this:
- Teacher (Explain): Discrete data is countable
- Teacher (Frame): Discrete data is…
- Students: Countable
- Teacher (Reframe): What type of data is countable?…
- Students: Discrete data
Explain, Frame, Reframe gives students a better chance of remembering the full statement as they have a chance to repeat the start and end.
Here are a few more examples:
- Explain: The formula to work out the area of a triangle is half base multiplied by the perpendicular height
- Frame: The formula to work out the area of a triangle is…
- Reframe: Half base multiplied by the perpendicular height is the formula to work out…
- Explain: The order in which we multiply does not matter because multiplication is commutative
- Frame: The order in which we multiply does not matter because multiplication is…
- Reframe: Commutative means the order in which we multiply…
2. Give 3-seconds thinking time, make it explicit, make it non-verbal
Research shows that teachers are generally pretty bad at giving students enough thinking time. This can be especially problematic with Call and Respond, where your quicker, more confident students will race to shout out the answer, destroying the moment of mass participation you were striving to create.
Try to leave 3-seconds between saying the first half of a statement and asking students to respond. This should give all students the opportunity to think about their responses and be ready to participate.
Warn students of this. Front-load the means of participation by telling them you are going to do a Call and Respond, and that they are not to say anything until they see your signal.
Then, during the Call and Respond, don’t verbalise the countdown as it will interrupt the flow of the statement. For example, you don’t want the statement to be: Discrete data is 1, 2, 3, countable. Verbal countdowns are even more problematic when the statement contains numbers. Consider: Interior angles in a triangle add up to 3, 2, 1, 180 degrees
Instead, develop a nonverbal countdown, followed by a signal to cue students to respond in unison. I go for 3, 2, 1 on my fingers, followed by a sweeping motion with my outstretched arms from my legs to my wait with palms up
It looks a bit like I am praying, but it seems to work.
Here is how all of this could flow together the first time you introduce it:
- Teacher: We are going to do a Call and Respond. I will say something, I want you to listen, and then when – and only when – I indicate by raising my hands, complete the statement… Discrete data is countable… Discrete data is… [silently counts 3, 2, 1, and then gestures]
- Students: Countable
- Teacher: What type of data is countable?… [silently counts 3, 2, 1, and then gestures]
- Students: Discrete data
Once students have nailed the routine, you can shorten it to something like this:
- Teacher: Call and Respond time. Discrete data is countable… Discrete data is… [silently counts 3, 2, 1, and then gestures]
- Students: Countable
- Teacher: What type of data is countable?… [silently counts 3, 2, 1, and then gestures]
- Students: Discrete data
In each of the examples below, assume I am front-loading, giving wait time and using non-verbal signals even though I don’t write this down.
Part 2: When to use Call and Respond
Call and Respond is better suited to some things than others. Here are some ways I have seen Call and Respond used effectively.
1. Use Call and Respond for short definitions
- Prime numbers have exactly two factors
- Prime numbers…
- Numbers with two factors are…
- Perimeter is the distance around a 2D shape
- Perimeter is…
- The distance around a 2D shape is called…
- Median is the middle number of an ordered list
- Median is…
- The middle number of an ordered list is called the…
This requires you to plan in advance the precise working of the definition you want to use. You can’t go chopping and changing words from one Call and Respond to another.
2. Use Call and Respond to improve pronunciation
Any piece of technical vocabulary that we introduce to students, we need to give them all a chance to verbalise it, and Call and Respond is a great way to do this.
- This word is pronounced I-sos-el-ees
- Listen again: I-sos-el-ees
- Your turn…
- And again…
Here is a nice example from a teacher I coached introducing Call and Respond to his class for the first time:
3. Use Call and Respond to check students are listening during an I Do
- I circle 3 because 3 is a prime number
- I circle 3 because 3 is a…
4. Use Call and Respond to check students have listened to instructions
- I want you to answer this question in your book, not on your mini-whiteboards
- I want you to answer this question in…
- Not on your…
5. Use Call and Respond to check students have listened to corrections
- Not quite. Listen carefully: Prime numbers have exactly two factors
- Say it back to me. Prime numbers…
- Everybody, prime numbers…
- What type of numbers have exactly two factors?…
Use Call and Respond for strategies
A nice way to deal with strategies in maths is to:
- Explain: Teach the strategy
- Condense: Express the strategy as a brief Call and Respond statement
- Unpack: Check students can explain the strategy
Here are some examples of the resulting Call and Respond statements:
- Right-angled triangle… Pythagoras or trig
- Quadratic equations… set equal to zero
- Drawing cumulative frequency… plot the upper bound
After each successful Call and Respond you could Cold Call students to check they can explain the strategy in detail
Use Call and Respond for Rules and Expectations
Just as with strategies, the rules and expectations first need explaining, and then turning into a Call and Respond statement. Here are some examples:
- When someone else is talking… look, listen, think
- Handing in homework… open at the correct page
- The hardest job in the classroom… helping someone else
Here is an example of a teacher who hadn’t quite nailed the rules and expectations surrounding mini-whiteboard use:
She subsequently rewrote the rules as Call and Respond statements that are now used across the whole department:
- When using whiteboards, we are silent
- We don’t doodle
- When we finish writing, hover face down
- We show our boards, after 3, 2, 1..
6. Use Call and Respond to replace note-taking
I think students copying down notes is a waste of time for the reasons I discuss here.
I watched a lesson where students took 7. minutes copying this slide into their books:
A much better use of that time would have been to introduce each statement verbally as a Call and Respond:
- Displacement is the distance moved from a point
- Displacement is…
- The distance moved from a point is called…
- The letter we use for displacement is s
- The letter we use for displacement is…
- S stands for…
Then display that statement on the board and move on to the next one. And then, give students a hand-out with the notes printed on it to stick into their books.
7. Add Call and Respond statements to knowledge organisers
Knowledge organisers are only effective if they enable self-quizzing, and Call and Respond is the ultimate self-quizzing format.
So, the above page from a maths knowledge organiser could be improved by splitting each statement in two, and placing them in separate columns:
Students could then revise by covering up either column, or getting someone to read one half of the statement and they have to recall the other.
Part 3: Boosting student participation during Call and Respond
Some students may initially be reluctant to join in with Call and Respond, especially if it is new. Here are some ideas to maximise the number of students who participate.
1. Introduce Call and Respond as if it is the most normal thing in the world
If students have never done Call and Respond before, it can seem a little weird. If it is clear that the teacher also finds it a bit weird and uncomfortable and they don’t really want to be doing it, students are likely to opt out. So, we must introduce and continue using Call and Respond both enthusiastically and treat it as just a regular part of the lesson.
2. Push for perfection
If the first response from students to a Call and Respond is half-heated and this goes unchallenged, then you can guarantee that the next time you ask them to respond, it will be even worse. Keep your standards high. Ask students to repeat the response until it is at the volume and participation ratio that you are happy with, and be careful not to let standards drop throughout the lesson as happened here:
3. Use Cold Call tactically first to maximise participation
Even though one of the reasons to try Call and Respond is to encourage students to participate more, some students may still be reluctant to join in for fear of being wrong. A few tactical Cold Calls can help here.
Cold Call confident students using Explain, Frame, Reframe, and once you have established the correct response, then open it out to the rest of the class. So, something like this:
- Explain: Discrete data is countable
- Cold Call: Discrete data is… Tom?
- Cold Call: Discrete data is… Emma?
- Frame: Everyone, discrete data is…
- Reframe: Everyone, what type of data is countable…
4. Include rehearsal
A drawback of Call and Respond is that individual voices get lost. You can counteract this, and provide students with an additional opportunity to solidify the statement by following a Call and Resond with rehearsal.
Here are to examples:
- Explain: Discrete data is countable
- Frame: Discrete data is…
- Reframe: Which type of data is countable?…
- Rehearse: Turn to your partner. The person nearest the door goes first. Each says the full sentence
- Explain: To solve a quadratic equation we first set it equal to zero
- Frame: To solve a quadratic equation we first…
- Reframe: Which type of equations do we set equal to zero to solve?…
- Rehearse: Rehearse this first step with your partner
5. Make Call and Response (even more) fun
After students have completed a Call and Respond, ask them to repeat it but this time to do it:
- Faster
- Louder
- Deeper
- Like you are really sad
- Like you are shocked
It may sound daft, but students seem to like it.
6. Use the power of social norms
Don’t worry too much if one or two students do not participate when you first introduce Call and Respond. The key is to get a critical mass of students fully involved, praise them, and the power of social norms will compel the reluctant few to come on board eventually.
Part 4: Getting Call and Respond started and making it sustainable
1. Start small
Like any new idea, introduce Call and Respond via a small-scale experiment. Here is a good protocol:
- Choose a topic
- Plan three Call and Respond statements
- Try it
- Reflect
- If it is going well, roll it out more
2. Involve colleagues
Find a colleague who also wants to introduce Call and Respond. Together you can give each other support and feedback.
Better still, try to get your whole department on board. Use the protocol above to choose a topic everyone will soon teach. If this is successful, you could add Call and Respond statements to topics in your schemes of work. This has the added benefit of leading to more consistent explanations and methods across a department.
