Reflect after reading Chapters 8-11:
As you begin to imagine a full lesson in a thinking classroom, what practices will support student autonomy and ownership? How will you know if the practices are working?
Consider the following questions:
- What is resonating with you from the reading?
- What caused you to pause and think during this section?
Some practices that will support student autonomy and ownership is the style of note taking that they do. By this, they have to be thinking and not just copying notes. So they have to decide what is important and what they want to write down that will help them in a few weeks. This made me pause and think about what type of question I am going to ask to help them think about what they find important to help them later when they haven’t used the skill for a little bit. Another aspect is having a gallery walk that showcases student work. Where their peers can ask them questions about their work and they explain it to the rest of the class, but even I could walk through the steps I am seeing in their work.
ReplyDeleteI liked the concept of keeping students in their flow. To help make sure I can support that I can just have a couple groups get the next problem in the sequence. However, I am trying to wrap my head around that because I have some extremely slow, and extremely quick thinkers/workers. I want to figure out the best way for the students to go and ask each other the next step and it be the next one for them and not 4 steps ahead of where they are at.
I read chapters 8 and 9 last Tuesday and decided to try creating a test review on Wednesday that had a variety of tasks that grew more challenging from start to finish. The students worked in their groups of three at the VPN's and moved at their own pace, receiving a new task as they worked. It was a bit chaotic for the groups that were moving quickly because I wanted to have time to provide "keep-thinking" questions to each group. There are some expectations I need to probably set in place for the future, and I have not tried having the students stand in a cluster before sending them off to work yet, which I plan to try - maybe when I start the new unit this coming week.
ReplyDeleteI was encouraged as I read chapter 9, as I feel that some of this strategy is already happening in my classroom - math talk in which the students are sharing rather than me about how they are solving problems. However, as I read, I realized I need to shift to a place where other students are sharing about the work they see their peers doing. I loved the idea of using a red marker to box in work I do not want erased.
Chapter 10 is something new. I rarely have my students complete a lot of notetaking because they have plenty of examples from their own work in their journals or spirals to look back at, but I can see the benefit of inviting students to record notes to "their future forgetful selves". I am a little anxious about finding more time for this in our new curriculum. It is something I might play with, in a few lessons, and see if I can build it into the lesson synthesis and cool down time.
Chapters 8-10 had so much great information and practical application it made for a lot of classroom experiments .") One thing is for sure it's a whole lot easier to introduce ways of thinking to 1st graders than it is for me to change my thinking. I find myself wanting to talk to much and give to many answers. So I put tape on my mouth (not really) and went to work on fostering an atmosphere where my students were doing much more of the thinking. I posted story problems around the room and I also let them pick their own groups to work with. It all sounded so good. I found out quick that I needed to give more direction. So on my second try it went much better. I could hear so much more discussion instead of chaos. They were asking questions and sharing ideas. The interest level was high and active learning was fun to watch. Each group was able to discuss their problem and how they came to get the answer. Then their favorite part was answering questions from the other students not on their team. Math talk was happening and I wasn't the center of it. They were paying attention to what others where doing and then also actively sharing ideas.
ReplyDeleteI think my next challenge is how can I do this more with everyday math (and other areas)problems. The key is keeping them thinking but when I'm introducing new material, I still want to lecture. So I'm working hard on asking them what they think we are going to be doing in our new area and not just giving answers.
My takeaway is that letting my kids struggle a little or work together is producing more of what I'm really after in teaching. I want to make thinking, questioning and inquisitive students. I like this book and the way it is helping me to become a more thinking teacher.
Cindy - I loved your description of your math time. I could practically hear the math buzz in my head. 😁 Yay you for sticking with it! I'm impressed with the way you reflect and make small adjustments to improve the math experience for the next time.
DeleteSuch good stuff! One of the highlights for me was near the end of Chapter 8, "Rather than being the source of knowledge in the room, teachers were working to mobilize the knowledge already in the room." I put that sticky by my document camera to serve as a reminder to me.
ReplyDeleteLike someone else mentioned, Chapter 9 affirmed some of what I'm already doing in my classroom around problem solving, so that was encouraging, although I was left with several micro-move thoughts I can still make to refine our work!
I really appreciated the section on notes, "by them, for them." Like Julie mentioned above, I don't do a lot of note-taking, per se, but I see a lot of value in this, and across content areas, too, where I just might be doing more rigid-what-I-tell-you-to-write-down-note taking. Not anymore...that was the old Mrs. Long! :)
"Not anymore...that was the old Mrs. Long." I just love you....🥰
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