What if we had a completely silent lesson?
A couple weeks ago in my 12th grade math class we experienced a moment of awkward silence. Without really thinking, I said "What if we had a completely silent lesson?" Just as quickly as I’d said it, one of them responded, "Can we?" I didn't expect any response to my half-baked musing, let alone a positive one. I asked again to gauge interest and found that the entire class seemed willing to go along with the experiment. So we marked the date: Friday the 20th of September would be Silent Lesson Day.
The day soon arrived. After a warm-up and a (written) joke about the scene in Love Actually where Andrew Lincoln shows up at Kiera Knightly’s doorstep and silently expresses his unrequited love, I began to work through some examples involving the differences between quadratic functions (like y = x²) and cubic functions (like y = x³). I relied on visuals, written explanations, and lots of miming. I'd point to a part of the graph and look back at the students with raised eyebrows, trying to say, "Do you see how this is different?"1
I worked through other examples, taking them step by step from the equation of a cubic function to its graph, and vice versa. After each example I gave them a similar problem to complete on their own. And then I walked through the classroom, looking over their shoulders to verify that they could do it.
What about questions? My original idea was to give out little pieces of paper for students to write on. But then I had another idea: mini-whiteboards. I handed them out at the beginning of the lesson and then when the first student raised her hand I pointed to the whiteboard and mimed a writing motion. She wrote out her question, which I then flipped around and showed to the entire class. I wrote out my answer underneath her question and then showed it to the class again. Much more efficient than little pieces of paper, and from what I could tell, the students were far more interested in one another’s questions than if they’d been asked verbally.
Much to my surprise, the students asked more questions than they usually do. Was this because of the novelty of writing questions out on whiteboards? Did the increased capacity for focus facilitate question generation? Or was there more misunderstanding because of my silence and so more questions as a result?
The lesson went on like that: eighty minutes of worked examples, questions written on whiteboards, and independent practice.
At the end of the lesson I asked students for their feedback via a post on Google Classroom: "Please share something about this silent lesson. How might it improve our lessons in the future?" Here are a few of the things they said:
I was able to focus easier because it was quiet.
I enjoyed it, I think it was relaxing and we were able to work well without speaking. 10/10 we should do this again for focus reasons.
It helps to think about the questions on your own easier, since the class is quiet the whole time.
The silence helps focus.
It was even more engaging.
I really liked it, it was a calmer environment and it was more productive, at least for me.
Allows me to process my own thoughts more, allowing me to understand at my own pace.
Many of them mentioned focus, which is not surprising. It's difficult to complete a thought if someone interrupts it, especially when that interruption is the answer you were working toward. Imagine, someone asks you to multiply 27 and 33 in your head. You set to working it out, and then across the room someone blurts out, "871!" Your brain turns off, right? You might not even realize that 871 isn't the right answer.
What did I learn? Teaching is significantly harder without the ability to speak. And I suspect that my teaching was actually worse. There's no way I can write out everything I say during a lesson. There's just not enough time. And so some explanations went unsaid, and unwritten. On the other hand, it was clearly a win for student focus.
What will we do next? I'm not sure. I see a few paths forward. One would be to just do this every once in a while with this particular class. I could also propose it to others in a similar way to how I did it with this class: "What if we…?" But it can't be forced. If I didn’t have 100 percent buy-in then there's no way it would’ve worked.2 This was also a very small class of nine students who are generally pretty quiet to begin with.
Perhaps there are other things I can integrate into my teaching practice that are based on this experience. More silent teacher3, for example, or being more strict about quiet during independent think time.
Silence is different, especially in a school, and our brains are drawn to difference. The scene in Love Actually worked specifically because Andrew Lincoln was silent. No one would remember it if he'd been talking. And so, at the same time that it's important to form good routines, it's also important to try new things. Keep the parts that work. Discard the rest.
Thanks to Marie for suggesting I turn this experience into a post.
At no point did I have to remind them that it was Silent Lesson Day or ask them to be silent — they did it on their own.
Silent Teacher is a teaching strategy in which an example problem is completed in silence and then discussed afterward, rather than being explained throughout the process.