Cold calling is the name Doug Lemov gave, in Teach Like a Champion, to a simple order: you ask the question, you pause, then you say the name. No-hands-up is the rule many UK schools already use, sometimes for behaviour as much as for learning: hands are not how you get to speak. Staffrooms treat the phrases as synonyms. They are not.
Both are about talk. The pupil who is quietly lost, and the one who is faking it, can survive either routine, because you still only hear one voice. Why a nod is not a check is in how you know who understood. Where these routines sit next to other checks is in checking for understanding. The wider set is on the blog.
No-hands-up is a rule. Cold calling is a technique.
No-hands-up means you select. It says nothing about timing. You might tell a pupil as you are teaching, "I'll ask you about this in a minute." You might go down a planned list. You might take a hand after all, once three selected pupils have spoken, because a volunteer has a genuine addition. The culture is: opting out of thinking is not the same as opting out of answering, and the confident do not get every turn.
Cold calling is stricter about the order. The question lands on the whole room. Names come second. If you say the name first — "Aisha, what is the gradient?" — everyone else is excused. That is a warm nomination, or just ordinary questioning. It is not a cold call, and it does not make the class think. Aisha thinks. The rest wait to see if she is in trouble.
You can have a no-hands-up room and still never cold call. You can cold call in a room that sometimes takes hands. The useful question is which problem you are trying to solve this minute.
How to cold call without making an enemy
The version that curdles is the gotcha. You see someone looking out of the window. You snap their name onto a question they had no time to hear. The class laughs, or goes quiet in the way that is worse than laughter. You have used a teaching move as a sanction. Next time, the pupil's job is to look attentive, not to understand. There is a separate conversation to have about listening. Do not have it disguised as formative assessment.
A cleaner version:
- Ask the question in full. One question. Not a chain of three with the name at the end of the chain.
- Give the thinking time to everybody. Count to three in your head at least. It feels long. It is not. If the question needs a method, give them twenty seconds and a line to write. Then the cold call is "read me your line", which is much kinder than "invent it now, out loud".
- Say the name, then wait again. Do not repeat the question in a more panicked form. Do not answer it yourself to fill the gap.
- Let "I'm not sure yet" be a legal answer. Then ask what they do know, or offer a choice of two, and say you will come back. Then come back. A pass that is punished once will never be offered again, and you are back to bluffing.
- Ask a second pupil whether they had the same, and why. The first answer is not the class answer until someone else has had to respond to it. "Who agrees?" on its own is worthless. Agreement is free.
What no-hands-up is good for
It changes the soundtrack of the room. Over a fortnight, more pupils expect to be asked, so more of them stay with you while you are explaining. It stops the same debate-team running every discussion. It lets you hear from a pupil who would never volunteer and who does, in fact, have the point.
It is also a good way to stop yourself asking the pupil on the front row because they are safe. If you do not trust your habits, write three names on the plan before the lesson, including one who finds the topic hard.
It is a poor way to check a class of thirty. You will get through four pupils in a few minutes if you are brisk, and you will convince yourself you "questioned the class". You questioned four. The other twenty-six practised looking ready. Some of them are very good at it.
Hands-up still has a job
Use hands afterwards for a different method or a real challenge. Say so: "I'll choose the first answers. Then I'll take hands if you have a different reason."
Do not take a hand to rescue a cold call that has gone awkward, unless you have already let the first pupil finish their "not sure". Rescuing too fast teaches the room that a volunteer will save them, which is the system you were trying to leave.
Why this still will not show you who is lost
Talk is public. The pupil who is lost has spent years learning that a public wrong answer costs more than silence. Cold calling raises the cost of not having an answer ready. It does not lower the cost of being wrong. Some pupils will meet that by thinking harder. Some will meet it by guessing quickly, or by repeating the last thing you said, or by agreeing with the previous speaker. Those are the tells on the faking page. A questioning routine does not switch them off.
There is a second limit. Even a perfectly run cold call samples. If the sample happens to be three pupils who have got it, you will move on, and the misconception in the middle rows comes with you. Sampling is fine for keeping attention. It is a bad sensor for "is the class ready for the practice task?"
When that is the decision, you need a commit from everyone, at the same time, before anyone has performed the answer. Boards, a sentence in the margin, or a private response. Then, if you want talk, cold-call someone to explain an answer that is already written. The writing did the check. The talk did the teaching.
A way to combine them tomorrow
Explain for a short stretch. Ask one question that matters. Twenty seconds, everyone writes a line, no hands. You read two lines by walking, not by collecting. Then you name a pupil to say theirs, then a second pupil to say whether the reason was the same. If the two public answers and the two you saw on paper disagree, you do not plough on. You stop.
If the question is one you cannot afford to misread, skip the performance entirely. Get It? takes the topic, drafts the questions for you to edit, and has every pupil answer on their own device with a code. No account, no hand up, no neighbour's sentence to copy. In about two minutes you see who has got it, who is unsure, and who needs help. It is free for a limited time. Cold calling keeps the room honest about attention. It was never designed to be a class set of books.
Questions people ask
What is cold calling in teaching?
Cold calling means you ask the question first, give thinking time, then name the pupil who will answer. They were not a volunteer. The name comes after the question so that everyone has a reason to think, not only the pupil you eventually pick.
What is a no-hands-up policy?
No-hands-up is a classroom rule: you choose who speaks, rather than taking answers from volunteers. It can include cold calling, but it can also mean you warn a pupil they will be asked, or you take contributions in an order you decided. The rule is about who gets the floor. It is not, on its own, a check that the class understood.
What is the difference between cold calling and no-hands-up?
No-hands-up is the rule that volunteers do not own the answers. Cold calling is one technique inside that rule: question, pause, then a name, so nobody can opt out of thinking. You can run no-hands-up without a cold call, and a cold call dumped on a pupil with no thinking time is just an ambush.
Does cold calling show you who does not understand?
It shows you whether the pupil you asked can answer that question, in public. It does not show you the other pupils. To find who is lost you still need everyone to commit an answer, on paper, on a board, or in private. Use cold calling to keep the room thinking. Use a whole-class check when the result will change what you teach next.
Try it on one class.
One lesson. One question. Two minutes. If it doesn't tell you something you didn't already know, walk away.
Try it free — no cardStudents need no account. They just need the code.
Read next
How to spot the pupils who are quietly faking it
The echo, the confident wrong answer, the shrug with a smile. Six tells that a pupil has no idea, and three questions that flush it out without embarrassing anyone.
Checking for understanding: quick techniques that show you the whole class
Seven checks you can run without a worksheet. What each one shows you, what it hides, and when a private answer is the one that tells the truth.
How do you know who actually understood the lesson?
The nod is not evidence. Why "does that make sense?" tells you nothing, and how to find out in two minutes who understood, who is shaky, and who is quietly bluffing.