All Hands Up

Hey 👋

July has finally arrived—let’s see what it brings. This week, a snack on taking social norms to the next level…

Big idea 🍉

Social norms are the unwritten rules that govern how people behave and what they believe is acceptable within a group. In schools, they tend to be much more powerful than formal rules or policies.

As teachers, we can nudge norms by spotlighting behaviours we want to see—catching students being good, narrating positive choices, giving out rewards. These teacher-led cues matter, but… norms gain real momentum when students themselves take the lead in amplifying desirable behaviours.

Take ‘all hands up’ cold calling. This is where the teacher poses a question, all students raise their hands, and then one is selected to answer (unlike ‘hands down’ cold calling, where no hands go up and students are chosen silently).

Now, imagine being a student in that room. You look around and see every single one of your classmates putting their hand up, ready to engage. What message does that send about how the class feels about learning? It says: we’ve been listening… we want to participate… we care about our learning.

For a student on the fence—uncertain whether to engage or how to feel about school—this peer ‘bat signal’ can tip both attitude and behaviour. And when they raise their hand too, they don’t just join the norm—they reinforce it, creating a virtuous echo chamber of visibility.

I’m not saying we should all adopt All Hands Up tomorrow. I’m just trying to provide a visceral example of just how powerful peer-led norms can be. And encourage us to look for opportunities (big or small) to make that happen. Paired talk, choral response, mini-whiteboards, silent writing—anything that gives students repeated, visible cues that everyone’s engaged—can have the same effect.

In short, we influence norms most powerfully not just by directing attention to the right behaviours and attitudes—but by designing routines where students themselves amplify those things. Peer visibility is the bridge between what we value and what becomes desirable.

NOTE: All Hands Up cold calling works best when the question is something all (or at least: most) students can confidently answer. And, it not only boosts engagement—it also serves as a quick and powerful check for understanding.

🎓 For more, check out Pritesh’s blog on All Hands Up, and this longitudinal study on how group norms influence individual achievement.

Summary

• Norms are powerful in school, we can nudge them by spotlighting desirable student behaviours.

• We can have an even greater impact by designing routines where students themselves are the amplifiers.

• All Hands Up cold calling is one example of this; we should look out for other opportunities.

Little updates 🥕

• Study testing sentence-unscrambling as a way to learn from textbook-style texts → finds it rarely helps, so it's not very useful in classrooms.

• Overview of findings of studies on student mental effort and self-regulation → explores how motivation, task design, and strategy support shape how effort is judged and used.

• Paper comparing instruction and scaffolding by more effective teachers → finds that explicit teaching and responsive feedback boost reading gains.

• Study on how reading skills affect online reading → finds strong comprehension makes it easy, while poor readers rely on problem-solving to navigate and understand.

Support Peps & get more stuff → Learn about Snacks PRO