#CyberPD WrapUp - Growing Our Thinking Together

Like Johnston, Gail Tompkins advocates for the creation of a community of learners in the classroom. In Literacy for the 21st Century: A Balanced Approach Tompkins (2009, p. 17) describes the characteristics of a community of learners environment:

Responsibility - Teachers set guidelines and expect students to be responsible. They also model responsible behavior. Students assume responsibility for their learning and behavior in the classroom.

Opportunities -Teachers provide opportunities for students to read and write in genuine and meaningful activities. Students actively participate in activities, for example, reading independently and sharing their writing with classmates.

Engagement - Teachers nurture students’ engagement through authentic activities and opportunities to work with classmates. Students become more engaged in literacy activities and spend more time reading and writing.

Demonstration - Teachers model what good readers and writers do using think-alouds to explain their thinking. Students carefully observe teachers’ demonstrations and then practice by modeling their thinking for classmates.

Risk Taking - Teachers encourage students to take risks while exploring a new idea and de-emphasize the need to always get things “right.” Students understand that learning is a process of taking risks and exploring ideas.

Instruction -Teachers provide explicit instruction through mini-lessons and provide opportunities for guided practice. Students participate in mini-lessons and apply what they’re learning in literacy activities.

Response - Teachers provide opportunities for students to respond to books they’re reading and to classmates’ writing. Students respond to books in reading logs and grand conversations and listen attentively to classmates share their writing.

Choice - Teachers offer choices because they understand that students are more motivated when they can make choices. Students make choices about some books they read, projects they create, and compositions they write.

Time - Teachers organize the schedule with large chunks of time for reading and writing. Students understand the classroom schedule and complete assignments when they’re due.

Assessment -Teachers monitor students’ learning and set guidelines about how students will be graded. Students understand how they will be assessed and often participate in self-assessment.

For the past year, I've had the honor of visiting two third-grade classrooms with two teachers who worked hard to create a community of learners with their students and I want to share a story of the students' view of this type of classroom.

To help students practice listening to each other and speak to and build off of each other's ideas, the teachers provided sentence starters to help the students develop the language of connecting ideas. The rules of engagement for this particular discussion was that everyone had to speak once before anyone could speak a second time and that the comment had to connect to another student's comment (agree, disagree, add to etc). After this especially intense discussion that included both third grade classes, the teachers asked the students to think about the process and reasons for having discussions. As scribes, the teachers captured the thinking of the students on a chart. The students said:

Growing Our Thinking Together

• Our thinking grows like a balloon with each comment from a friend
• It gives us confidence
• We capture other people's thinking
• We build on what others say, like knots in a rope (they had studied Quipus (talking knots) of Peru)
• We cooperate, listen and ask for clarification
• We restate our ideas
• Everyone contributes
• We yield to each other
  • Let less talkative people go first
  • Person with relevant information goes first (valuable)
  • Let the person who is responding to another go first

This metaphor, of growing our thinking together like a balloon, carried over for the rest of the year. If a student derailed a conversation, it was called “popping the balloon.” It was so powerful to hear the students recognize the power their own language had on others.

Like many others have said, I will need to re-read Opening Minds to really let the ideas simmer. It is my goal this school year to create a community of learners in my classroom where I learn along with my students and honor the contributions they provide.

If you would like to join the conversation about Peter Johnston's book Opening Minds:Using Language to Change Lives, check out #CyberPD on Twitter, or this week's host, Carol, at Carol's Corner.

#CyberPD Opening Minds Chapters 4-6

Children collaborating on drawing a picture from
Early Learning Central

A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. - Thomas Carruthers

Although the titles of this week's chapters seem to indicate they are incredibly different topics, the theme that I found through each of them is shifting the responsibility for learning to the students rather than the teacher. The teacher is still responsible for the creation of a learning environment, and it is through the language that teacher uses (and associative practices) that he/she creates an environment where students learn from each other and individually become active agents in their own learning. This is done through thoughtful use of feedback, the creation of a culture of alternative thinking, and the development of social imagination.

Feedforward Rather Than Feedback (Chapter 4)

If the purpose of feedback is to improve further understanding and build skills while deepening perseverance in learning, than the more appropriate term might be feedforward (creating the worldview of progressing forward, rather than regressing back). Too often schools have focused on assessment (or using assessment as data) as the final hurdle to be jumped in a unit (or year) rather than a part of the learning process. Or, with Generation Me, students are praised with the mistaken belief that praise will increase self-esteem and motivation.

Johnston transforms the purpose of feedback to one that creates student narratives of agency and a dynamic mind-set of learning. He states, “The heart of formative assessment is finding the edges of students' learning and helping them to take up possibilities of growth” (p. 40). This means that feedback needs to focus on process and be non-judgmental, as judgement creates a fix-attribute mind-set. A focus on process helps students imagine and believe in the possibility of change and progress. The alternatives to straight-up praise or criticism is:

• Talk about cause and effect - “When you did __________ , I noticed ______
• Be positive (which doesn't mean praise) and notice strategies used
• Provide alternative ways of looking at the work
• Notice what is partially correct and work from what the students have shown they know

As teachers, we need to model these ways of providing feedback and encourage students to take up these models in their interaction with each other as peer interaction is the majority of a student's day.

Flexible and Collaborative Thinking (Chapter 5)

In a dynamic-learning frame knowledge is also dynamic. I know this is a radical idea for many people who grew up in a world of fixed-knowledge (Just the facts, Ma'am). When knowledge is dynamic, the construction of understanding is influenced by the perspectives and contexts of the individuals involved. Dialogue is the foundation of building flexible and collaborative thinking and the perception of uncertainty enables this dialogue. This means that we as teachers need to model comfort with uncertainty and expect disagreements but also explanation of personal positions. I have seen the teachers I work with do some amazing things to build knowledge together with their students. When a question comes up that doesn't have an immediate answer, the teacher says, “How can we find out the answer to that?” The teachers I've worked with use their whiteboard and chart papers to record their students' thinking and help them see the connections between ideas.

Social Imagination (Chapter 6)

Learning is fundamentally a social activity. Part of existing as a social being is learning how to read cues from others, imagine the perspectives of others and possible outcomes of actions. Johnston calls the first part “mind reading” - being able to read and interpret body language and cues accurately. Social reasoning is the ability to take perspectives and imagine possible outcomes. By helping students develop their social imaginations, they are also more likely to be able to self-regulate themselves and understand the consequences of their behaviors. Although these skills are not often listed in standards and benchmarks, nor tested, they are essential in building relationships with others – which provides the opportune environment for learning. Teachers can support the development of social imagination by asking students to imagine the motivations of book characters or classmates, posit multiple reasons for incidents, role play how to manage events, and guiding students to problem solve together.


If you would like to join the conversation about Peter Johnston's book Opening Minds: Using Language to Change Lives, check out #CyberPD on Twitter, or this week's host, Jill Fisch at My Primary Passion.