For the most part, Mr. Homan will only use two methods to call on the students.  The first is to take volunteers, and the second is destiny sticks.  For silent reading and particularly tough questions, he would always take volunteers, but for other questions he would use the destiny sticks.  I noticed that once the destiny sticks are pulled out, the students who were causing problems before quiet down a little bit.  It isn’t a whole lot, usually just enough to hear if their name is being called, but it helps out nonetheless.  They also seem to pay enough attention to respond when he asks, although the immediate response is almost always ‘I don’t know.’

What Mr. Homan did that was really good was not accept this as an answer.  He would either wait for the student to answer the question for real instead of the knee jerk response, or he would provide a bit more context for the question if he thought the student wasn’t getting it.  This made the students accountable for their answers, and they couldn’t get away with an ‘I don’t know.’  This didn’t stop them from trying, however.

I don’t know if Mr. Homan’s last technique is pedagogically sound, but I like it and I do it too.  If a student was particularly not paying attention when he asked a question he would single that student out and ask what the answer was.  Usually this resulted in the student muttering and ‘I don’t know,’ and then Mr. Homan asking if they heard the question.  They seemed slightly embarrassed, and their behavior improved, but over the course of the the time I was there these students kept having to be dealt with.  I’m curious if that’s a long term solution, and if the embarrassment does them any good.