APPENDIX A

TEACHING TECHNIQUES FROM Teach Like a Champion

Throughout this book, we make reference to the techniques in Doug’s book, Teach Like a Champion, by describing activities we use to train teachers to use the techniques effectively, and by describing their use in running practices. For ease of reference, eight of the techniques are summarized here.

TECHNIQUE: STRONG VOICE

Strong Voice is a technique that allows teachers (and coaches) to replicate the skill of teachers who can “command a room.” These teachers can enter a loud and unruly venue, which others would struggle to bring order to, and instantly get people to do as they ask or engage people who aren’t listening (or don’t want to listen) and get them focused.

Strong Voice teachers use five principles to signal their authority.

Economy of Language.

Fewer words are usually stronger than more. Being chatty signals nervousness and indecision while choosing words carefully shows preparedness and clarity of purpose. Be careful to remove all extraneous words, especially when you are nervous. Use a simple sentence structure. Make one crisp, clear point at a time. This allows you to ensure that messages of primary importance are not diluted by messages of secondary importance. Watch to see that your directions are followed. When you need to be all business, be clear and crisp, and then stop talking.

Do Not Talk Over.

Make a habit of showing that your words matter by waiting until there is no other talking before you begin. By ensuring that your voice doesn’t compete for attention, you demonstrate that the decision to listen isn’t situational. To achieve this goal you will probably need to use a “self-interrupt”; that is, start a sentence and break it at some obvious and awkward point to show that you will not go on until you have full attention.

For example, a teacher planned to address his class with a direction: “Students, I need your binders out so you can write down the homework correctly.” If listeners weren’t attentive, he might cut off his own sentence, ideally at a noticeable place, and remain silent for a few seconds before starting again: “Students, I need your—” If the low-level muttering and distractions did not entirely disappear, he might initiate another self-interrupt, this time with a bit less of the direction given: “Students, I—” During these interruptions he might stand stock-still to demonstrate that nothing could continue until attentiveness was restored.

Do Not Engage.

Once you have set the topic of conversation, avoid engaging in other topics until you have satisfactorily resolved the topic you initiated. This is especially important when the topic is behavioral follow-through.

Suppose, for example, that David is pushing Margaret’s chair with his foot. You say, “David, please take your foot off of Margaret’s chair.” David replies, “But she’s pushing me!” or “But she keeps on moving into my space!” Many teachers might engage the distraction David has proposed by saying, “Margaret, were you doing that?” or even, “I’m not really concerned with what Margaret was doing.” This, however, means responding to David’s choice of topic, not making him engage yours. A better response would be to say, “David, I asked you to take your foot off of Margaret’s chair,” or even, “Right now I need you to follow my direction and take your foot off of Margaret’s chair.” These responses make explicit reference to the fact that you initiated a topic and expect it to be addressed.

Another possible reply from David in the above situation might be, “But I wasn’t doing anything!” Again, the best strategy is not to engage his topic. After all, you wouldn’t have corrected him if you’d had a question in your mind about whether David’s foot was where it should be. The best reply is, “I asked you to take your foot off Margaret’s chair.” Once you’ve done that, you don’t need to say anything more.

In a coaching setting, you might be giving directions when a participant asks about something else. “Is this going to be like the fast-break drill?!” Rather than saying, “Well, a little bit, but we’re working on something else” or even “That’s right,” you might simply pause briefly, put your finger to your lips, and then continue what you were saying. If you engage the distraction when you are trying to give directions, however, you will encourage more of the same. You will find that you rarely give directions clearly or effectively.

Square Up/Stand Still.

In every comment you make, you speak nonverbally as well as with words. Your body can show that you expect people to follow your request. When you want to express the seriousness of your directions, turn with two feet and two shoulders to face the object of your words directly. Make sure your eye contact is direct. Stand up straight or lean in close (this shows your level of control by demonstrating that you are not shy or afraid; you don’t crouch down to a dog you fear will bite you). If the student to whom you are speaking is distant, move towards him.

When giving directions that you want followed, stop moving and don’t engage in other tasks at the same time. If you are passing out papers while you direct students, you suggest that your directions aren’t that important. After all, you’re doing other things at the same time too. At times it may even help to strike a formal pose, putting your arms behind your back, to show that you take your own words seriously and that they, like you, are formal and purposeful.

Quiet Power.

When you get nervous, when you are worried that students might not follow your directions, when you sense that your control may be slipping away, your first instinct is often to talk louder and faster. When you get loud and talk fast, you show that you are nervous, scared, out of control. You send a message to students that if they can control you and your emotions, then they can make you put on a show that’s much more entertaining than revising a paper or nailing coordinate geometry, say. When you get loud, you also, ironically, make the room louder and thus make it easier for students to successfully talk under their breath. Though it runs against all your instincts, get slower and quieter when you want control. Drop your voice. Make students strain to listen. Exude poise and calm.

TECHNIQUE: 100%

There is one acceptable percentage of students following a direction given in your classroom: 100%. This may sound draconian, but it is achieved primarily with finesse; in the classrooms of champion teachers the culture of compliance is both positive and—most important—invisible. Great teachers achieve 100% compliance through the effective application of three principles.

1. Use the least invasive form of intervention.

The goal is to get 100% compliance so you can teach. Getting compliance via constant, time-consuming disruptions causes the “death spiral.” In breaking the concentration of students who were attentive, the interruptions get everyone off task. The solution is to correct without stopping or while stopping as briefly as possible and with as little distraction from the content of your lesson. Here are six forms of intervention, in order of invasiveness. Try to use the first ones as much as you can:

2. Rely on firm, calm finesse.

• Catch it early: Champion teachers catch off-task behavior early, as eyes begin to wander and before they’ve locked in on and begun to engage a distraction, for example.
• “Thank you” is the strongest phrase: Saying “thank you” after a student has done what you asked not only underscores civility but emphasizes for the rest of the class that the student in question did what you asked. (Why else would you thank the student?) This normalizes compliance and makes you seem calm, civil, and in control.
• Purpose, not power: Achieving compliance is an exercise in purpose, not power. Students need to follow directions so that they can be assured of having the best chance to succeed. Responsiveness is the means, not the end. “I need your eyes on me so you can learn” is a more effective statement than “I asked for your eyes on me. When I ask you to do something, I expect you to do it.”
• Universal language: Champion 100% teachers stress the universality of expectations. Their language reinforces this: “I need everyone sitting up,” or even better, “We need everyone sitting up,” which stresses universality better than “I need your eyes, Trevor.”

3. Emphasize compliance you can see.

• Invent ways to maximize visibility: Find ways to make it easier to see who’s followed your directions by asking students to do things that you can see. Asking for eyes on you is better than asking for attention because you can see it when you have it; and asking for pencils down and eyes on you is better yet since it gives you two things you can see, and because the second thing you’ve asked for—pencils down—is far easier to see in a quick scan of the room than is eye contact.
• Be seen looking: When you ask for compliance, make sure to look for it and to be seen looking for it. Every few minutes you should scan the room with a calm smile on your face to ensure that everything is as it should be. When you give a direction, remember to pause and scan the room. Narrating your scan—“Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Marissa. Eyes right on me, front row”—reinforces that when you ask for something, you then look to see who’s done it and you consistently observe what individuals do. You show that you have “radar.”
• Avoid marginal compliance: It’s not just whether your students do what you’ve asked but whether they do it right. A certain number will complete a task only as fully as you show them what you expect. They’ll rightly want to know what exactly “Eyes on me” means. Eyes near you? Eyes on yours for a fleeting second? Eyes locked on yours while you’re talking? The difference between these three interpretations is night and day.

TECHNIQUE: COLD CALL

To Cold Call is to call on students regardless of whether they have raised their hand. You ask a question and then you call the name of the student you want to answer it. When students see you frequently and reliably calling on students who don’t have their hand raised, they come to expect it and prepare for it. Calling on whomever you choose regardless of whether a hand is up brings several critical benefits to your classroom.

First, Cold Call allows you to check for understanding far more effectively and systematically. It’s critical to be able to check what any student’s level of mastery is at any time, regardless of whether he or she is offering to tell you. In fact it’s most important when he or she is not offering to tell you. Cold Call allows you to check on exactly the student(s) you want to check on to assess varying levels of mastery. When students are used to being asked by their teacher to participate or answer, they react to it as a normal event; this allows you to get a focused, honest answer and therefore check reliably for understanding. Of course this means that you’ll also do best if you use the technique before you need to check for understanding. Your goal should be to normalize it as a natural and upbeat part of your class.

Second, Cold Call increases speed, in terms of your pacing and in terms of the rate at which you can cover material; both are critical issues. To understand the degree to which this is so, make an audiotape of your lesson sometime. Use a stopwatch to track how much time you spend waiting (and encouraging and cajoling and asking) for volunteers. With Cold Call you no longer have the delay after you ask, “Can anyone tell me what one cause of World War One was?” You no longer have to scan the room and wait for hands. You no longer have to dangle hints to encourage participants or tell your students that you’d like to see more hands. Instead of saying, “I’m seeing the same four hands. I want to hear from more of you. Doesn’t anyone else know this?” you simply say, “Tell us one cause of World War One please, [slight pause here] Darren.” Using Cold Call, you’ll find you move through material much faster, and the tedious, momentum-sapping mood when no one appears to want to speak up will disappear. These two results will increase your pacing—the illusion of speed you create in your classroom—which is a critical factor in how students engage.

Third, Cold Call allows you to distribute work more broadly around the room and signal to students not only that they are likely to be called on to participate, and therefore that they should engage in the work of the classroom, but that you want to know what they have to say. You care about their opinion. Many students have insight to add to your class but are simply not the kind to offer unless pushed or asked. They may wonder if anyone really cares what they think. Or they think it’s just as easy to keep their thoughts to themselves because Charlie’s hand is always up anyway. Or they have a risky and potentially valuable thought on the tip of their tongue but aren’t quite sure enough to say it aloud yet. Sometimes there will even be a glance, a moment when this student looks at you as if to say, “Should I?” or maybe even, “Just call on me and you’ll share responsibility if this is totally off the mark.” Many people mistakenly perceive Cold Call to be chastening, stressful. When you’ve watched tape of champion teachers Cold Calling, you’ll know that it’s not. In fact, when it’s done well, it’s an extremely powerful and positive way to reach out to kids and say, “I want to hear what you say”—even if Charlie’s hand is up for the tenth time in twelve questions.

The success of the technique relies on the application of a few key principles:

• Cold Call should be predictable. The behavior you want (attentiveness) comes before you call on students, so the more predictable it is—students know it is likely to happen—the more effective it will be. Cold Call frequently and regularly. It’s fine to let students know it’s coming.
• Cold Calling should be systematic; that is, it should apply to everyone regardless of behavior or other factors. Call on multiple students. Distribute Cold Calls around the room, and eschew language that makes it seem like they happen because of something a student did or said.
• Keep Cold Calls positive. Make sure a Cold Call isn’t a “gotcha” but an invitation to a real question. And make sure your goal is for students to get it right.
• Unbundle your Cold Calls by breaking up large questions into smaller ones and distributing them around the room. Why ask one question of one student—“What do you think was the most important cause of the Civil War, and why? David?”—when you could ask more than half a dozen questions of multiple students: “How many major causes of the Civil War does the author discuss—David? And what was one of them—Tyron? And another—Sarah? And the last—Jason? And which one do you think was most important—Carson? Do you agree—Mirela? Why?”

TECHNIQUE: RIGHT IS RIGHT

When responding to answers in class, the job of the teacher is to set a high standard for correctness, to hold out for 100%. There’s a strong likelihood that students will stop striving when they hear the word “right” (or “yes” or some other proxy), so you should only name as “right” that which is truly and completely right. Students must not be betrayed into thinking they can do something that they cannot.

Many teachers respond to an almost correct answer a student may give in class by “rounding up.” That is, they’ll affirm the student’s answer and add some detail of their own to make it fully correct, even though the student didn’t provide it and may not recognize the differentiating factor as being significant. Imagine a student who is asked at the beginning of Romeo and Juliet how the Capulets and Montagues get along. “They don’t like each other,” the student might say, in an answer that most teachers would, I hope, want some elaboration upon before they called it fully correct. “Right,” the teacher might say, “they don’t like each other and they have been feuding for generations.” That’s the round-up. Sometimes the teacher will even give students credit for the round-up as if they said what they did not and what she, in fact, merely wished they’d said: “Right, what Kiley said was that they don’t like each other and have been feuding. Good work, Kiley.” In either case, the teacher has set a low standard for correctness in her class.

When answers are three-quarters correct, it’s important to tell students that they’re almost there, that you like what they’ve done so far, that they’re closing in on the right answer, that they’ve done some good work or made a great start. You can repeat a student’s answer back to him so he can listen for what’s missing and further correct (“You said the Capulets and the Montagues didn’t get along . . .”). Or you can wait, prod, encourage, cajole, or in other ways tell a student what still needs doing, or ask who can help get the class all the way there (“Kiley, you said the Capulets and the Montagues ‘didn’t get along.’ Does that really capture their relationship? Does that sound like what they’d say about each other?”), until you get students all the way to a version of being right that’s rigorous enough to be college prep.

Though as teachers we are the defenders of right answers, of the standards of correctness, there are in fact four ways in which we are at risk of slipping in holding out for “right.” These lead us to the four categories within the Right Is Right technique.

Hold Out for All the Way. Great teachers praise students for their effort but never confuse effort with mastery. A right answer includes the negative sign if a negative sign is warranted. There is no such thing as “Right! Except you need a negative sign.” When you ask for the definition of a noun and get “a person, place or thing,” don’t do students the disservice of overlooking the fact that the answer is incomplete (a noun is a person, place, thing, or idea).

Answer My Question. As a student you learn quickly in school that when you don’t know the right answer to a question, you can usually get by if you answer a different one or if you say something true and heartfelt about the wider world. Can’t identify the setting in the story? Offer an observation about the theme of injustice in the novel. “This reminds me of something from my neighborhood . . .” Most teachers can’t pass up a student’s taking on issues of justice and fairness, even if what they asked about was the setting. Over time, students come to recognize this.

If you’re a Right Is Right teacher, though, you know that the “right” answer to any question other than the one you asked is wrong. You should insist that the student answer the question you asked, not the one she wished you asked or what she confused it for. You can respond with something like, “We’ll talk about that in a few minutes, Daniella. Right now I want to know about the setting.”

Another situation in which students answer a different question than the one you asked is when they conflate two pieces of information about a topic. You ask for a definition and they give you an example. You ask them to describe a concept and they provide the formula to solve it. If you start to listen for them, you’ll find these sequences are far more common than you’d expect.

If you ask your students for a definition and get an example, say, “James, that’s an example. I want the definition.” After all, knowing the difference between an example and a definition matters.

Right Answer, Right Time.

Accepting a student’s answer before all the steps required to get there have been shown deprives the rest of the students a full understanding of the process. It’s tempting to think that it’s a good thing the class is moving ahead quickly, but it’s not. Teaching a repeatable process is more important than teaching the answer to a problem. It cheats the class if you respond favorably to one student’s desire to move ahead to the end.

Say: “My question wasn’t about the solution to the problem. It was about what we do next. What do we do next?”

Similarly, if you are asking the class what motivates a character’s actions at the beginning of a chapter, you should resist accepting or engaging with an answer that discusses—even insightfully—the more dramatic events that conclude the chapter, especially if the point of discussing the first part is to better understand the ending (when you get there). You should protect the integrity of your lesson by not jumping ahead to engage an exciting “right” answer at the wrong time.

Use Technical Vocabulary.

Good teachers get students to develop effective right answers using terms they are already comfortable with (“Volume is the amount of space something takes up”); great teachers get them to use precise technical vocabulary (“Volume is the amount of space an object occupies”). This expands student vocabularies and builds comfort with the terms students will need when they compete in college.

TECHNIQUE: WHAT TO DO

Champion teachers recognize that some portion of student noncompliance—a larger portion than many teachers ever suppose—is caused by students misunderstanding a direction, not knowing how to follow it, or tuning out in a moment of benign distraction. Recognizing this means giving directions to your students in a way that provides clear and useful guidance, enough of it to allow any student who wanted to do as asked to do so easily. The name for this technique is What to Do, and using it makes directions routinely useful and easy to follow.

What to Do starts, logically, with your telling students what to do—that is, not with telling them what not to do. We spend a lot of time defining the behavior we want by its negative: “Don’t get distracted.” “Stop fooling around.” “Cut it out.” “That behavior was inappropriate.” These commands are vague, inefficient, and unclear. They force students to guess what you want them to do. What’s the “it” in “Cut it out,” for example? Assuming George doesn’t want to get distracted, if all you tell him is not to do something, what should George assume the alternative is, and how would he know it?

Even when we don’t define behavior by its negative, we are often insufficiently helpful. When you tell a student to “pay attention,” ask yourself: Does she know how to pay attention? Has anyone ever taught her? Does she know my specific expectations for paying attention (having her eyes on the speaker, say)? Has anyone ever helped her learn to avoid and control distractions and distractedness? The command “pay attention” provides no useful guidance. It fails to teach.

As teachers, one of our primary jobs is to tell students what to do and how to do it. Telling students what to do rather than what not to do is far more efficient and effective, and it refocuses us—even in moments that are about behavior—on teaching. It expresses the belief that teaching can solve problems. However, just telling kids “what to do” is not quite enough. To really be effective, directions should be specific, concrete, sequential, and observable.

• Specific: Effective directions are specific. They focus on manageable and precisely described actions that students can take. Instead of advising a student to pay attention, for example, I might advise him to put his pencil on his desk. Or keep his eyes on me. This provides useful guidance that a student can take action on and pay attention to. It is easy to remember. It is solution oriented. And it is very hard to misunderstand.
• Concrete: Effective directions are not just specific but involve clear, actionable tasks that any student knows how to do. If I tell my student to pay attention, he may or may not know how to do that, but if I tell him to put his feet under his desk, I have asked him to do something no student can misunderstand or not know how to do. If he appears to struggle, I can get more concrete: “Turn your body to face me. Bring your legs around. Put them under your desk. Push in your chair.” These are real things: physical, simple, commonplace. There is no gray area in this command and no finesse or prior knowledge required to follow through. As I will discuss in a moment, the elimination of such gray areas allows me to better understand the intention of my student.
• Sequential: Since a complex skill like paying attention is rarely a single, specific action, effective directions should describe a sequence of concrete, specific actions. In the case of my student who needs help paying attention, I might advise him, “John, put your feet under your desk, put your pencil down, and put your eyes on me.” If John’s a little further along, I might add, “When I write it on the board, that means you write it in your notes.”
• Observable: In John’s case, I was careful to give him not just any sequence of specific steps to follow; I described observable actions. I asked him to do things that I could plainly see him do. This is critical. The observational component of my directions left John with very little wiggle room in terms of his accountability. If I just tell him to “pay attention,” I can’t really observe whether he has done so and therefore I cannot hold him accountable very effectively. He will say, “But I was paying attention.” Consciously or unconsciously, students sense and exploit this lack of accountability. However, if I tell John, “Put your feet under your desk, put your pencil down, and get your eyes on me,” I can see perfectly well whether he has done it. He knows perfectly well that I can see whether he has done it. He is therefore more likely to do it.

TECHNIQUE: NO OPT OUT

A sequence that begins with a student unable or unwilling to answer a question should end whenever possible with that student giving the right answer. There can be two causes of the student’s initial failure: he or she can be earnestly trying but lack the knowledge or skill to answer, or the student can essentially be refusing to try, using “I don’t know” as a tool to get the teacher to leave him alone for the rest of the lesson, the rest of the day, or the rest of the year.

Either way, you want the student to be successful. Students need to rehearse success, and you need an approach that establishes accountability for effort. With No Opt Out, if they don’t try, they save no effort because they’ll still have to answer in the end.

There are four basic formats of No Opt Out:

TECHNIQUE: POSITIVE FRAMING

People are motivated by the positive far more than the negative. Seeking success and happiness will spur stronger action than seeking to avoid punishment. Psychological studies repeatedly show that people are far more likely to be spurred to action by a vision of a positive outcome than they are by avoiding a negative one. So while you should still fix and improve behavior relentlessly, strive to do so as positively as you can, using these six rules:

Live in the Now.

In public, that is, in front of your class or while your lesson is underway, avoid harping on what students can no longer fix. Focus corrective interactions on the things students should do right now to succeed from this point forward. There’s a time and place for processing what went wrong; avoid making that time when your lesson hangs in the balance, and avoid making that place in front of class. Give instructions describing what the next move on the path to success is. Say, “Keana, I need your eyes forward,” not “Keana, stop looking back at Tanya.”

Assume the Best.

Don’t attribute to ill intention what could be the result of distraction, lack of practice, or genuine misunderstanding. Until you know an action was intentional, your public discussion of it should remain positive, showing that you assume your students have tried (and will try) to do as you’ve asked. Saying, “Just a minute, class, some people don’t seem to think they have to push in their chairs when we line up,” assumes selfishness, deliberate disrespect, and laziness. Not only is it more positive to say, “Just a minute, class, some people seem to have forgotten to push in their chairs,” but it shows your faith and trust in your students.

Further, assuming the worst makes you appear weak. Showing that you assume your students are always trying to comply with your wishes suggests that you assume everyone knows you’re in charge. By contrast, saying, “If you can’t sit up, Charles, I’ll have to keep you in from recess,” reveals your suspicion that Charles will disobey you. Say, “Show me your best, Charles,” and walk away (for the moment) as if you couldn’t imagine a world in which he wouldn’t do it.

Allow Plausible Anonymity.

Allow students the opportunity to strive towards your expectations in anonymity as long as they are making a good-faith effort. Begin by correcting them without using their names, when possible. If a few students struggle to follow your directions, consider making your first correction something like, “Check yourself to make sure you’ve done exactly what I’ve asked.” In most cases this will yield results faster than calling out laggards. Saying to your class, “Wait a minute, Homeroom Harvard [or “Tigers” or “fifth grade” or just “guys”], I hear calling out. I need to see you quiet and ready to go!” is better than lecturing the callers-out in front of the class. And as with “assume the best” (earlier), you can still administer consequences while preserving anonymity: “Some people didn’t manage to follow directions the whole way, so let’s try that again.” When there is no good-faith effort by students, it may no longer be plausible to maintain anonymity, but “naming names” shouldn’t be your first move. Remember that you can deliver consequences anonymously and that doing so stresses shared responsibility among your students. Some students weren’t doing their job and we all own the consequence.

Build Momentum/Narrate the Positive.

Compare the statements two teachers recently made in their respective classrooms:

Teacher 1: [Stopping before giving a direction] I need three people. Make sure you fix it if that’s you! Now I need two. We’re almost there. Ah, thank you. Let’s get started. . . .

Teacher 2: [Same setting] I need three people. And one more student doesn’t seem to understand the directions, so now I need four. Some people don’t appear to be listening. I am waiting, gentlemen. If I have to give detentions, I will.

In the first teacher’s classroom, things appear to be moving in the right direction because the teacher narrates the evidence of his own command, of students doing as they’re asked, of things getting better. He calls his students’ attention to this fact, and this normalizes it. Students are arguably more accountable for their behavior in the first room, but nobody seems to notice because failure seems so unlikely.

The second teacher is telling a story that no one wants to hear: from the outset students can smell the fear, the weakness, and the inevitable unhappy ending. Everything is wrong and getting worse, generally without consequence. Students can hardly fear accountability when their teacher is describing their peers’ impunity (“Some people don’t appear to be listening”).

Great teachers conjure momentum by normalizing the positive. They draw attention to the good and the “getting better.” Narrating your weakness only makes your weakness seem normal. If you say, “Some students didn’t do what I asked,” you have made that situation public. Now your choice is consequence or countenance.

Challenge!

Kids love to be challenged. They love to prove they can do things. They love to compete. They love to win. So challenge them; exhort them to prove what they can do; build competition into the day. Some examples:

Talk Expectations and Aspiration.

Talk about who your students are becoming and where they’re going. Frame praise in those terms. When your class looks great, tell them they look “college,” tell them they look like “scholars,” tell them you feel like you’re sitting in the room with future presidents and doctors and artists. While it’s nice that you’re proud of them and while it’s certainly wonderful to tell them that, in the end the goal is not for them to please you but to leave you behind on a long journey towards a more important goal than making you happy. It’s useful then if your praise sets a goal larger than your own opinion. On a more micro level, seek opportunities that reaffirm expectations around smaller details. When you’re correcting, say, “In this class we always track,” not “Some people aren’t giving us their best attention.” Finish an activity by saying, “If you finish early, check your work. Make sure you get 100% today.” Keep their eyes on the prize by constantly referring to it with your words.

Technique: Format Matters

It’s not just what students say that matters but how they communicate it. To succeed, students must take their knowledge and express it in a variety of clear and effective formats to fit the demands of the situation, and of society. The complete sentence is the battering ram that knocks down the door to college. The essays required to enter college (and every paper written once there) demand absolute fluency with syntax. Conversations with potential employers require subject–verb agreement. In the working world, spelling counts. To prepare students to succeed in that world, master teachers do students the favor of requiring complete sentences, correct spelling, and proficient grammar in their classrooms and reinforcing it every chance they get. It’s not enough to have great ideas; students have to present great ideas in the format that makes them valuable, in the language of opportunity.

Champion teachers rely on a few basic format expectations:

• Grammatical format: Great teachers correct syntax, usage, and grammar in the classroom even if they believe the divergence from “standard” is acceptable or normal in other settings.
  Two simple methods that involve no discussion and no judgment beyond identification of the error itself are especially helpful:
  • Identify the error: When a student makes a grammatical error, merely repeat the error in an interrogative tone:
    “We was walking down the street?”
    “There gots to be eight of them?”
    Then allow the student to self-correct. If the student fails to self-correct, use the “begin the correction” technique (below) or quickly provide the correct syntax and ask him or her to repeat. This builds familiarity with the language of opportunity and ensures that there’s no incentive to pretend not to know the answer—you’re still going to have to repeat it anyway.
  • Begin the correction: When a student makes a grammatical error, the teacher begins to rephrase the answer as it would sound if grammatically correct and allows the student to complete it. In the examples above, that would mean saying “We were . . .” or “There has to . . .” and expecting the student to provide the full correct answer.
• Complete sentence format: Insist upon answers being delivered in complete sentences; strive to give students the maximum amount of practice at this critical skill. Use several methods to support students in practicing using complete sentences over and over in speaking and writing. For example, you can
  • Provide the first words of a complete sentence to show students how to begin sentences. This is especially important when students are not yet ready to answer every question on their own in a complete sentence, as in this exchange:
    Teacher: James, how many tickets are there?
    James: Six.
    Teacher: There are . . .
    James: There are six tickets in the basket.
  • Remind students before they start to answer. End your questions by “punctuating” them with the letters “RTQ,” short for “repeat the question.” Do this after every question as students are learning this skill, as in
    Teacher: Jamal, what’s the setting of the story? RTQ.
    Student: The setting is the city of Los Angeles in the year 2013.
  • Remind students afterwards with a quick and simple reminder with the lowest possible transaction cost, as in
    Teacher: What was the year of Caesar’s birth?
    Student: 100 BC.
    Teacher: Like a scholar, please.
    Student: Julius Caesar was born in 100 BC.
• Audible format: Insist that answers are delivered in a loud, clear voice. What’s the point of discussing answers with 30 people if only a few can hear what you’re talking about? If it matters enough to say in class, then it matters that everyone can hear it. If not, an unspoken but damning message about the importance of what happens in that room is delivered: class discussion and student participation are afterthoughts, take them or leave them. Underscore that students should be listening to their peers by insisting that their peers make themselves audible.

In short, when you’re teaching, set expectations for quality that will ultimately be internalized and build the habits of mind that drive achievement. Know that the assessments that grant access to higher learning demand certain formats as well, so there’s little sense in exempting students from the formats they’ll have to master to get into college.