Silent Teacher: Five reasons I model without talking
A deep dive into the I Do phase of a worked example
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One of the most discussed ideas from my first book, How I wish I’d taught maths, is Silent Teacher. This is where the teacher begins the I Do phase of a worked example by modelling the entire process in silence.
This may sound like an odd thing to do. After all, the Modality Effect from Cognitive Load Theory extols the importance of images complemented by spoken words.
However, since my book’s release in 2018, I have observed hundreds of lessons that use Silent Teacher, and its power still blows me away. Here are five reasons why I think doing that initial model in silence is a useful thing to do… and what comes after it.
1. Silent Teacher focusses students’ attention
You are at the cinema, people are chatting through the adverts and munching on their popcorn. Then, all of a sudden, the lights dim to indicate that the feature presentation is about to begin. What happens next? Almost immediately, conversations end, popcorn is put to the side, and focus ensues.
A similar thing happens in the classroom with Silent Teacher. Students need a cue that is the equivalent of those cinema light dimming. Something as simple as saying: We will begin Silent Teacher now… should do the trick.
This collective focus will not happen right away with all classes. It is important to explain the purpose and expectations for behaviour during Silent Teacher, and hold students to account if they do not meet those expectations. However, many teachers have been surprised by just how much focus there is from their students during that period of silent modelling, and how much their students tell them they appreciate it.
2. Noise begets noise
I watch many teachers deliver many worked examples, and one thing I have noticed is that the more the teacher talks, the greater the noise level in the room during that modelling. Even though the teacher has asked the students to remain silent, it is all too easy for words to be whispered and quiet conversations to simmer away under the cover of a teacher's explanation.
Silent Teacher immediately eradicates that. During Silent Teacher, no one talks. The expectations could not be clearer. So, any noise at all is an easily audible infringement of that expectation, for which students can be held to account.
3. Silent Teacher supercharges the power of gestures
There is plenty of research out there about the importance of gesturing during modelling - see this useful summary from Peps Mccrea. I hypothesise that Silent Teacher heightens the power of teacher gestures because all students have to focus on is the teacher’s movements and the things they are writing without having to divert some of that attention towards the words they are saying. To use a cinema analogy again, think how much more attention we pay to the movements of a mime artist versus those of a speaking actor.
These gestures can be achieved at the board, under a visualiser, or using a tablet. The medium is not as important as focussing students’ attention on the part of the model you want them to think about at this stage.
4. Silent Teacher promotes low-stakes self-explanation
This is a big one. There is vast swathes of research out there concerning the positive impact self-explaining - an internal dialogue students have with themselves trying to make sense of what they see - has on learning.
On an episode of Ollie Lovell’s podcast in 2020, leading researcher Alexander Renkl explained that there are two types of productive self-explaining behaviour:
Principled: where the student tries to explain what is going on
Predictive: where the student tries to explain what is going to happen next
Silent Teacher provides a great opportunity to prompt students to engage in both of these behaviours. We can say to students:
Every time I pause, this is your cue to think: What have I just done, and what do you think I will do next.
Students often need an explicit cue for this, especially if Silent Teacher is new. I like to step away from the board (or move my pen away from the camera of the visualiser) and tap my head.
The stakes are important here. Self-explaining is not having to explain what is going on to your partner or the teacher. It is a moment of silent self-reflection - an opportunity to take the first crucial steps in piecing together a new idea without any pressure.
5. Silent Teacher provides an opportunity for Representation
Professor Pam Grossman identifies three concepts that are important for understanding an idea:
Representation: show the whole process
Decomposition: break the process down
Approximation: rehearse the process
The mistake I made in my modelling for many years was to jump straight to Stage 2. I would explain each step of the process, often line-by-line. The problem is that students have not seen the bigger picture - they have no sense of where each of these steps is leading. Silent Teacher is an opportunity to do just that. By allowing students to see the whole process from start to finish, they are then in a much better position to both engage with and understand the steps of the process when we break it down, and then apply what they have learned when we give them a follow-up example to try.
What comes next?
If the I Do started and finished with Silent Teacher it would be rubbish. We have not added the crucial verbal explanations needed to illustrate and illuminate what we have demonstrated visually. We also have zero evidence anyone has been paying attention, let alone has understood. Silent Teacher provides a foundation for understanding, but it is just the first stage of the process.
Following Silent Teacher, there are a few options. Some teachers invite students to ask them questions, or write down questions. Others instigate a Turn and Talk to allow students to talk through the process with their partner and fill in any gaps.
I have experimented with all of these approaches and have found them to be effective. But more often than not these days I follow up Silent Teacher with a combination of narration and checks for listening. In other words, I talk students through the process they have just witnessed unfold in silence, and at each stage, I check to see if they are listening. So, something like this:
The first thing we do is to multiply 3x by 5…
What is the first thing we do… Emma?
What is the first thing we do… Mo?
3x multiplied by 5 gives us 15x
Where did the 15x come from… Sam?
These checks for listening are a mixture of Cold Call (where I select individual students) and Call and Respond (where the whole class replies in unison). These checks for listening sustain students’ attention, helping them fill in any gaps they may have following Silent Teacher, ready for the checks for understanding that will come in the We Do phase of the modelling. I have written about checks for listening here.
Final thoughts
Let’s be honest, Silent Teacher is a weird concept. Like anything new, it is unlikely to go smoothly the first few times you do it. You can increase your chances by explaining to students what you are doing and why, making expectations super clear, and choosing a relatively simple example so they experience early success.
But even if things go well, do not feel any pressure to do Silent Teacher all the time. There will be certain topics, classes, or even times of the week when you feel it is just not suitable. Like anything else, Silent Teacher is a tool in our educational armoury, ready to be deployed when we feel it will be most effective.
Oh, and in case it is useful, I recorded 5 Silent Teacher tips here:
What has been your experience with Silent Teacher?
Is there an upcoming lesson you could try it with?
Let me know in the comments below!
🏃🏻♂️ Before you go, have you…🏃🏻♂️
… checked out our incredible, brand-new, free resources from Eedi?
… read my latest Tips for Teachers newsletter about not having the title and date visible during the Do Now?
… listened to my most recent podcast about atomisation and unstoppable learning?
… considered booking some CPD, coaching, or maths departmental support?
… read my Tips for Teachers book?
Thanks so much for reading and have a great week!
Craig
I used this technique with a very difficult Year 3 class. The only way I could get them to pay attention was to mime everything. They loved it! It became a game to see how long we could hold the silence in the morning; some days we could go for an hour, using mime, whiteboards and lots of gestures. I discovered it by accident when I went in and they were very noisy. To start with, I refused to do anything until they were completely silent. It took nearly 40 minutes of waiting, standing quite still and commanding at the front of the class, but it was worth it in the end. It was the saving grace of that class, who had previously destroyed teachers in a few weeks.
This is a great summary of benefits. I particularly like the comparisons to the movie theater. One other benefit I've found is that if you tend to say too much, like me, then worked examples can end up taking a long time. Silent teacher encourages me to move things along so that they can see the procedure or idea demonstrates in one go, rather than constantly broken up with parenthetical information.