Raising One's Hand in Class

You don't know that the teacher gets that impression. If he/she is any good, he/she will be aware of who is not putting up their hands. Teachers monitor pupil's progress in a number of ways, oral and written.

Because the show of hands is what the teacher wants, not the answer. She is working on an assumption (perhaps flawed) that every student raising a hand is confident enough of their knowledge to risk being called upon.

They did call on other than the hand wavers in my classes.

You believe all teachers ignore all the other students?

I don't recall any of my teachers ever strictly calling upon those of us with hands up. In some ways, raising your hand was a defensive move because the teacher was more likely not to call upon you. Back in my day, they liked to keep everyone on their toes and called on you when you were least expecting it, whether your hand was raised or not.

That's true re my experience too, and I'm an older sort, where a great many kids were in classes taught by one nun. She (many shes over the years) would tend to the handwaver, or two, of choice, or not, those among of wavers, and then cold call (a phrase I didn't know then). How else to get a variety of students engaged?

The trouble to me now re my classes back then (late 40's, 50's in elementary and high school) were that the games I loved by Sister Mel (all baseball, all the time, two teams, many things to spell or add or divide or identify) was that it left quite a few kids feeling dumb, which now we know a bit more about.

I just wanted to beat Ronnie Miller once.

Maybe that has changed since my elementary years, I've no idea.

Laughing.. the word I lost the "baseball game" re spelling and Ronnie Miller was engineer.

Do teacher's still teach this way?

When I was in Ed. school we were taught to use more inclusive forms of in-class assessment, for example group work with a class reporter.

When I was teaching, students would raise their hand to ask me a question, or to signal that they had missed something (usually meaning I was going too fast or had forgotten to explain something). I never thought that throwing random questions to the class for individual students to answer was very effective.

When I gave out in-class work, it was generally to be done in small groups so that each student would have the chance to participate in getting the answer.

Your assumption seem not at all proven that teachers do no in fact called on students that do not raised their hands.

Next the hands raisers are indeed likely to know the correct answer however there are also a sub-set of students who do not raised their hands due to being shy not due to them not knowing the subject.

I assuming that teachers know their students will enough to get a good idea if the class as a whole is understanding the material.

Exactly. Same back in my day too. In addition, I distinctly remember kids who would put there hand up, and when called on, would give an obviously wrong answer. One boy, Jeffrey, was notorious for this.

I heard once that girls will put up their hands if they know the answer, boys will do it whether they know it or not.

I went to Catholic school, where if you a bunch of kids raised their hands, you were all obligated to hiss "ssssstr......sssssssstr" to get the nuns attention.

I imagine when she heard that, she felt the same way I do today when I go to the pool, and there's kids, there, and I hear the first "Marco....."

Jo, the conclusion I have reached from watching nuns in action is that their motivation was not to "engage" them, at least not in the subject matter.

I always figured their decision of who to call on was based exclusively on who they wanted to beat next, because that's what you get if you have the wrong answer. Actually, you can have the right answer, and still get beaten, because they will say you're wrong anyway, if they feel like smashing that ruler down on your mitts.

They still do that? I have a vague memory of seeing it with one nun a few times back in the fifties. And beat would have been an exaggeration of it.

Ya aint seen the movie "The Blues Brothers?" You should. It ROCKS!

Never did.

Well, here ya go then. Them Penguins is rough, I tellya!

Heh..

I remember my teachers back in the 1970s and 1980s would SOMETIMES ask students to raise their hands to answer the teacher's question. The teacher also would RANDOMLY ask students questions without asking them to raise their hands. That applies to answering questions or going up to the chalk board.

I ALWAYS had an answer to every question asked. It was very reliable, and I never had to change it. It was:

"Hell if I know."

You sound like Jeffrey.

He'd raise his hand, get called on, then sit there saying "um.....uhhhhh"

He just like raising his hand. Being a part of it all.