Remember Engelmann's premise that the mind is lawful? He further explains: "What humans learn is perfectly consistent with the input they receive." To get people to learn something — whether it is to read, divide fractions, or explain the cause of tsunamis — teacher models have to prioritise one thing above all else: getting kids to identify and internalise that law.
Previously, we talked a lot about how not to do that. Don't under-explain, or kids will be confused. Don't over-explain, or kids will likewise be confused — and it will take forever, robbing kids of the practice time they desperately need. So how do we effectively, eloquently, and simply propel students towards academic laws in just a few minutes? We think that three basic teacher moves from Teach Like a Champion are good tools for getting this right, and they all hinge on getting kids to shoulder the thinking.
1. Cold Call: Don't do thinking that kids should do
It's two-step equation day, and 2x + 5 = 15 is on the board. We know that kids have learned to balance and solve one-step equations. If the teacher points out that "this equation looks different than ones you've seen before," kids have already missed one opportunity to notice it themselves — to be on the lookout for the first of a few important laws in this lesson: solving this equation takes two steps.
Instead, a teacher could write both equations on the board and ask: "How is equation A different from equation B?" A pause for students to think, then, "Akeyo?" Akeyo is in the hot seat — but more importantly, so is everyone else.
Cold calling sets the expectation — in a positive, energy-driving way — that kids should be ready to answer at any point in time. To be ready at any time, you need to be thinking at every point in time. The cold call is one of the simplest ways to ensure that every kid in the room is thinking: not watching the teacher think, not listening to the teacher say things, but getting down to the work of identifying 2x + 5 = 15 as a two-step equation. Used throughout a lesson, this is a powerful way to make kids think, not watch.
2. Turn and Talk: Don't do thinking that all kids should do
Another cold call — "What do we normally do to solve for x?" — gets some version of "use the inverse operation to get x by itself." This is where we need to lock in this law and give every kid the opportunity to articulate it themselves.
Turn and Talk gives every student in the room a chance to practise saying the law out loud — not just the one student cold-called. It's the difference between one student rehearsing a rule and every student rehearsing it. The more students articulate the law themselves, the more deeply they internalise it.
3. Right is Right: Hold out for the complete answer
When a student gives a partially correct answer — "You subtract" — the temptation is to accept it, affirm it, and move on. But "Right is Right" means holding out for the precise, complete answer: "You subtract 5 from both sides."
This discipline trains students to think carefully before they speak and signals that intellectual precision matters in this classroom. It also prevents a common dynamic where partially correct answers accumulate into a fuzzy collective understanding that doesn't hold up when students work independently.
"What humans learn is perfectly consistent with the input they receive." — Engelmann
If the input is imprecise, so is the learning. These three moves — Cold Call, Turn and Talk, Right is Right — are simple to learn and transformative in practice. Together, they build a classroom culture where thinking is shared work between teacher and student, rather than a performance delivered by the teacher to a passive audience.