Achieving 100% student attention is not easy. But there are lots of things school leaders and teachers can do to make it easier.

In the first post in this series, I explained why 100% attention from 100% of students is important. In the second post, I discussed two key strategies for achieving this:

1. ‘All hands up cold calling‘ instead of ‘No hands up cold calling’
2. Asking high-frequency ‘checks for listening‘ in addition to ‘checks for understanding’.

Whilst extremely powerful in and of themselves, these strategies will land better if several other strategies are in place. Collectively, these strategies set students up for success by helping them to pay attention to the teacher.

I use the phrase ‘set them up for success’ deliberately: our goal as teachers is to help our students succeed. This means that we must use strategies upstream of delivering an explanation that create conditions for students paying better attention.

Strategy 1: Desks in rows. Teacher desk with optimal radar.

Our attention is most easily directed when we physically face the right direction. If students are facing their classmates – they will look at their classmates. If students are facing their teacher, we make it easier for them to pay attention to their teacher. It really is that simple.

I went through various iterations of desk arrangement over my first two years of teaching, ranging from clustering desks in groups so that a quarter of my students had their back facing me(!), to having a horseshoe around the room to facilitate discussion. Behaviour and attention were both miles better when desks were arranged in rows so that every student faced me.

If you are a leader reading this: this needs to be your number 1 priority. At the next possible opportunity go into every classroom in your school and ask yourself: is the desk configuration optimal for student attention to be on the teacher?

Does the teacher desk face the students so that the teacher can see the entire class easily? No student should be out of sight during an explanation.

If you are limited by having fixed benches, as in some labs, see if other classrooms are free to use instead. Perhaps you can timetable the trickiest classes or the teachers that need most support with student attention into a classroom that can have rows? Do whatever it takes to set both your students and your teachers up to succeed. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Securing 100% attention of your students is the most upstream strategy you can invest in for securing maximal learning.

Strategy two: 3-2-1-SLANT

Whenever you want the attention of your students, you have to give a crystal clear signal. The signal 3-2-1-SLANT is the best I have come across because it has three key features:

1. It begins with a countdown to give students time to follow the instruction, thereby stetting them up to succeed.
2. SLANT is an acronym that summarises key expectations that all set students up to succeed in paying attention: sit up straight (we know that slouching is a proxy for poor attention); listen; arms folded; nothing in hands; track the teacher (looking at the teacher is the best proxy for attention).
3. The phrase is an unambiguous boundary: if you are still writing or talking after ‘3-2-1-SLANT’, then you have not followed the instruction. A sanction is fair because the cue was unambiguous.

Critics will argue that sanctioning for carrying on writing or talking after a cue is authoritarian. I’d politely rebut by saying that if students can continue to not pay attention according to their own timelines, they either risk missing out on the teacher’s exposition, or the teacher ends up waiting and wasting 31 other students’ time. Establishing and maintaining any slick routine requires clear praise and sanctions. These aren’t harsh: a demerit or a warning comes from a place of love: “I need you to pay attention so that you help us maximise the amount learning that takes place. I don’t like giving demerits, but do you know what I dislike even more: seeing you fall behind because you keep missing out on crucial knowledge or instruction.”

‘Arms folded’ is another divisive one. Why care how the students are sat? When your standards as a teacher are really high, this really matters. When everyone in the class is sat up straight and has their arms folded, all students look the same. There is uniformity in the classroom. This makes it so much easier to notice someone who isn’t doing one of these things. A fiddler immediately stands out. Someone not tracking you stands out. The stillness helps you work out, without much cognitive effort, if you are likely to have 100% of your students’ attention. It also means you can really notice your student’s expressions. Is someone upset? Does someone look tired? Is someone nodding along? Is someone intrigued? Is someone confused? The uniformity in body language highlights the differences that matter.

Finally, an important element of SLANT is that T stands for ‘track the teacher‘ and not ‘track the speaker‘. If students regularly turn around in a lesson to look at the speaker, we are effectively encouraging a habit that will stop them from being fully attentive. This is because students will start to turn around even when the teacher is speaking. The habitual turning around also trains teacher radar to not notice this. As unnatural as it seems, students should track you (the teacher) when anyone speaks. I suspect readers will find this unconvincing: I can only say that I speak from experience!

Strategy 3: Silence as the default

In any classroom someone is always in charge: if it’s not the teacher, it will be the loudest student. In the worst classrooms, the class bullies are in charge. In such classrooms, the most vulnerable students feel unsafe. It is heart-breaking.

Silence as the default transforms the culture. If students want to speak, they must put up their hand. No calling out. No talking out of turn. No talking over each other.

I first witnessed silent classrooms in 2014 when I visited King Solomon Academy. I was absolutely gobsmacked – I hated the silence. It felt oppressive. I totally get what it’s like to feel uncomfortable with silence. But I left KSA thinking I can definitely expect more of students – they are capable of focussing for longer than I had initially given them credit for. That was the start of my journey to becoming a champion for silent classrooms. After my visit, I started to notice the quiet students who would always get on with their work. Though they would never show it, I knew they were frustrated with the loud students constantly dominating the lesson. It was stopping them from learning. And it wasn’t fair.

Suddenly, I started to look at the classroom through the eyes of the most vulnerable students: what is it like not getting the chance to just sit and get on with the work for these students? What is like for them to wait and wait while their teacher deals with behaviour of a handful of students, constantly calling out or arguing back?

Strategy 4: Instruction Sandwich: “When I say ‘go’ and not before…”

All of my instructions are like a sandwich: the bread is always the same, but the fillings are different. Yummy. Here is the basic script for all of my instructions:

The top slice of bread: “3,2,1 SLANT” Scan to ensure 100% attention. “When I say ‘go’ and not before…”

The filling: “Take your seats and then SLANT” or “Pass out the sheets that are at the end of each row” or “Whiteboards and pens out” or “Clear your desks and back in SLANT” or “Stand behind your chairs, tracking me”.

The bottom slice of bread: “Ready?” Dramatic pause and scan. “Go! 10, 9, 8 super speed from [Lewis]… 3-2-1-SLANT” Scans deliberately.

The line “When I say ‘go’ and not before…” is the first line of almost every instruction. It works beautifully because it is unambiguous and commanding, but it is also playful.

The filling is concise. Economy of language is everything when it comes to instruction sandwiches. Too many fillings are also terrible. Never put more than two fillings in an instruction sandwich.

Non example: “Take out your black pens, take your seats, open your books, get the title and date in and answer the do now questions!” This is a terrible instruction sandwich because the fillings will fall out of your students’ heads. They won’t remember what to do. But most importantly, the pace is going to be dreadful because everyone is doing things at different times.

The beauty of chunking your instructions is that you get unison. Remember, culture is everything. Imagine everyone closes their books together and are back in SLANT, awaiting the next instruction. Then everyone packs their pencil cases away and returns to SLANT together. Then everyone stands behind their chairs simultaneously. The room feels like a team. We are moving together; we are learning together. There is a great power in togetherness that builds a team culture. It’s the same reason why ‘all hands up cold calling’ is superior to ‘no hands up cold calling’.

The bottom slice of bread is the best of all. It holds everything together. The ‘ready?’ builds a playful sense of anticipation. The teacher scans to ensure stillness. False starts are to be playfully stopped. On the cue, ‘Go‘, everyone moves together. It feels like a team rowing in unison.

Most crucially, the end of the instruction sandwich must be tied to a number to begin a countdown. Forgetting the countdown is a huge missed opportunity. Countdowns add a sense of urgency. It adds a playful competitiveness. Which row will be first? Who will beat the countdown? Keep the countdown steady like a metronome! It has to be fair – remember – we are setting them up to succeed, not catching them out. The exception where you wouldn’t use a countdown is when you want students cognitively engaged. Countdowns are mainly for routines.

Crescendo: 3, 2, 1 SLANT. Silence. Scan the room in an exaggerated way (see: Be Seen Looking from Teach Like a Champion) to ensure stillness.

The Instruction Sandwich script in short: “When I say ‘go’ and not before… [concise instruction] … Ready? Pause …Go! Metronome countdown ending in 3-2-1 SLANT. Scan to ‘be seen looking’.

Whole school routines hold greatest power

All of the strategies above really ought to come from school leadership. These strategies work best at the whole-school level. Consistency is key when it comes to forging culture. If you are a teacher not in a position of leadership – share this with your SLT! Ask for support to set your students up to succeed in giving you 100% attention. Imagine:

1. Every classroom has desks in rows
2. Every teacher uses 3-2-1-SLANT (or equivalent)
3. Silence is the default in every class
4. Every teacher uses consistent language in their ‘Instruction Sandwiches’.

The power of a school coming together is formidable. Culture is strongest when all staff row together. This requires strong leadership from the top.

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This post was an attempt to share strategies that work upstream of ‘checks for listening’ and ‘all hands up questioning’. In my next post, I will pick up where I left off last time and discuss how you respond to a class where some hands are up and others are not for ‘checks for understanding’ questions.

@Mr_Raichura