It’s time for chapter 4 of Teaching With Intention! Thank you to Schroeder Shenanigans In Second and Positively Learning for hosting chapter 4 with some powerful insight and some great freebies!
This chapter is all about creating a classroom culture that gets our kids THINKING!!!!! This sounds like a no brainer…but as I was reading through the chapter (on the worst flight of my life….) I realized there are so many missed opportunities for me to get my little ‘staches to think and share their thinking.
Putting MY own thinking on display is an area that I can improve in greatly. When I’m doing our writing mini-lessons I am very deliberate about talking out loud so students can hear/see my thinking and process for writing. So why not be deliberate like that with math lessons and read alouds?!
Just like we have to model and show our students what good reading or writing looks like, we MUST show them what good thinking looks and sounds like by DOING IT FOR THEM!
The other thing that really gave me a gut punch in this section of chapter 4 was on page 52 when Debbie Miller says WE HAVE TO BE PRESENT!
How many times have I caught myself focused on what’s next or the meeting I have coming up or being distracted by technology. People, it’s ok to admit it. We all do it. We’re human. But how can I model good thinking if I’m not present in what’s happening with the students?! How can I converse with them about their thinking if I’m not present to hear their thinking???
Teaching has become so overwhelming with mandates and assessment and data and paperwork and tedius, pointless requirements that I tend to lose sight of my job: TEACHING MY ‘STACHES! This year, I made a conscious effort to ignore the mind numbing STUFF that doesn’t help my kids and spend more time on my teaching. I dealt with all of the STUFF later (and honestly, sometimes just let it go and ignored it completely) and guess what? My classroom continued to function. Everyone learned. Everyone was safe and happy. I say this to encourage you to put the STUFF aside and be present with your kids. The stuff isn’t important. Let’s be present for our students and ourselves!
I also have to say, that Debbie is my teacher twin when she says just BE YOU!!! That’s what I tell my students and teacher friends all the time. JUST BE YOU!!!! People want you. Nothing else. So when it comes to putting your thinking on display, JUST BE YOU!
This is another area that I struggle with. We all know how awkward that silence is when you ask a question and silence. Are they thinking? Are they processing? Are they thinking about picking a booger and eating it? It’s natural for us to jump in and give the answer or guide them to an answer. But we’re not teaching them to think. We’re giving them an answer.
I tell my class to be “problem solvers” and I stand back and let them figure things out. Forcing them to figure things out on their own makes them more creative, makes them better thinkers and makes them more independent. I don’t want my class to rely on me for anything.
This year we started doing interactive read alouds. This approach is more of a conversation and less of questioning and answering. As I read a book, I stop and ask “Who wants to share their thoughts?” or “Let’s talk about what’s happening.” And they talk. They don’t raise their hands. They just start talking. And they piggy back off of each other. (There has to be some training on waiting your turn…knowing when someone is finished so you can share…). What I love about this is that we’re thinking and sharing our thinking. Instead of them focusing on getting the answer right for me, they’re sharing their thinking about the story. And they’re using their classmates thinking to do more thinking. I definitely plan to do more of this approach next year so we can have even more opportunities to share our thinking!
Jen Jones from Hello Literacy taught me to use the word BECAUSE to get students to think more about their own thoughts and ideas.
When students share a thought or an idea, in our class, they have to follow it up with BECAUSE…and justify their thinking. This forces them to not only share more of their thinking but they have to be able to justify their thinking. It’s also a great higher order thinking skill!
You can click on BECAUSE to see my original post about the shift in my classroom when we implemented this one word!
And finally, Debbie spoke of keeping a notebook with you and recording students thoughts when you’re conferencing with them so you have their exact thoughts and thinking word for word. Especially when it’s something profound.
Then I started daydreaming about a wall in the hall (I rhymed…hehe) with bright colorful paper with quotes from the ‘staches. How amazing would that be to have a THINKERS WALL?! When a student shares profound or insightful thinking, you jot it in your notebook and then later on you write it (or print it) on colorful paper and add it to a thinking wall?!