Clip 2/20: Day 2: Whole group check-in routine

Promoting and Requiring Active Engagement: At the middle school level in the beginning of the year, Patty Ferrant can build more extensively on her older students’ prior experiences sharing thinking and using available materials.







She also uses a “dot talk” to give all students access to sharing ideas, and she requires all students to participate in sharing. She routinely says things like “I can’t move on until I see all thumbs up, that you have at least one way of describing these dots.” Her students learn that she means it; they are held accountable for making sense.