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?
Respond and Interact
After reading these chapters, please post your response to one {or more} of the prompts above. Read our colleagues' reflections. Feel free to respond to someone by sharing a comment, insight or interesting possibility.
The idea of autonomy in a first-grade classroom sounds a bit daunting but is something that I am going to try and do more of next year. Although I anticipate it will take some adjusting in the classroom to reach a higher level of autonomy. The younger students are very adult-dependent, but I will try working independently or with a group. I took some time to think about ways that I can be "deliberately less helpful" when responding to student questions such as "I'm done, what do I do now?". I think the idea of finding the 'flow" for students and allowing autonomy while working are two extremely powerful ideas when used together. I think the ability to have those things working simultaneously will depend on my ability to establish norms and expectations in my classroom. While my students won't be taking many "notes" in math, I still thought it was an interesting chapter to read through. I sort of compared it to the idea of using anchor charts in the classroom. I used "fill-in-the-blank" charts during student teaching and students found them very fun and engaging. I also thought it would potentially be beneficial to do a class anchor chart where we come up with things we want our future selves to remember about the math, and then have that displayed in the classroom for our next lesson.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like we were thinking along the same lines with class anchor charts for our future selves. It might be great to do with other content areas as well! This definitely means we'll need a lot more wall space! :)
DeleteI paused and thought a lot more while reading these chapters. Trying to make sense of chapter 10 on consolidating a lesson from the bottom up and thinking about this within a primary classroom. I noticed note-taking was written around grades 3-12 which makes sense since reading/writing skills are being developed in the primary grades, essentially not being accessible to everyone. What is the first grade version of note-taking? Anchor charts! I've done anchor charts before. Like the live/dead notes mentioned in the chapter, I rarely saw students refer to them unless I pointed them out. Probably the one they looked at the most - the one with their picture and sticky note they wrote. A chart that was personalized and written by them. Hmm... Next year, I'll engage students in creating anchor charts to their future forgetful selves. At the beginning of the year, perhaps sharing ideas with me scribing for them. As the year progresses, having students actually do the writing on class anchor charts. Then a few weeks later, engage in activities that require them to use the charts. :)
ReplyDeleteI LOVE this idea Lovelyn...so great! 🥰
DeleteAs I think about student autonomy and student ownership in math in my classroom, my mind drifted to anchor charts and how much I use them. Some anchor charts are created by me, and others are created along with the students. Going forward, having the students participate in the anchor chart creating process more often will give them ownership of the charts. Pointing out that the charts have been made by them and are for them to use for their "forgetful future self" is something I want to say more. The idea of standing really does work. I witnessed this in my writing lessons with anchor charts and reviewing them daily before beginning writer’s workshop. I want to continue this practice in math. I have used gallery walks during IM math lessons to help students who may be struggling, with the hopes it will give them inspiration on a problem their group is working on. I have also suggested talking to another group. It is fun to watch these kids engage in conversation and agree or disagree with each other. Of course, it must be taught that we do this in a respectful way with a lot of modeling first. What I struggled with often was the kids who finished right away and needed more of a challenge. The modes of engagement to keep students challenged is something I want to personally work on, doing, justifying, explaining, teaching, and creating a new task.
ReplyDeleteThere was a lot to think about in these 4 chapters. My biggest take aways were thinking about ways to teach my 2nd graders how to have more autonomy and ownership of their learning. I like the ideas of suggesting groups should work with another group after they have finished to talk about how they solved the problem. Having vertical work surfaces becomes important if I want other students to easily see what other groups have done. Vertical surfaces become even more important when you want to consolidate what has been learned during the lesson. I loved the idea of consolidating from the bottom so every student can participate in the conversation. Another idea, I will use next year is marking group work with a read pen in different stages of the process and having students explain what other students are thinking during the gallery walk. Now my challenge is how to create vertical work surfaces in my small classroom. 😊
ReplyDeleteI can appreciate trying to find creative ways to work in small spaces! Love to hear any fun ways you come up with that work fo you to create vertical work surfaces! :)
DeleteThese chapters had so many ways to help us to create thinking in our small groups, and truly had me thinking just how we could make some small adjustments to make some accommodations. I really love helping the students take ownership of their learning, this is so very important!!! I really like the idea of making the learning personal. Having the students taking notes or helping themself remember using the idea of anchor charts on sticky notes would be really helpful in our groups. Students could create individual reminders to themselves, as well as take ownership in finding success as they are navigating their learning. As they work together with partners and or other in groups, it will be powerful to share ideas and learning together to gain understanding,and grow from one anothers learning too! I like that although we have small groups and a very short time with students, we can find small ways to still encourage some of this great thinking and learning!
ReplyDeleteOne of the highlights in this section for me 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." It's hard for us not to respond to every single question that gets fired our way...we need to be intentional about mobilizing the knowledge instead of being the source of knowledge!
ReplyDeleteThis idea stood out to me too! Working to not answer or show students anything that another group or another student will really help foster a community of collective learners.
DeleteI like Lovelyn and Hannah's idea of anchor charts when consolidating with primary aged students. We teach them to use the phonics charts, sound walls, word walls, and other anchor charts so it feels like math anchor charts would naturally flow in our classrooms. When reading the gallery walk part, I made a note to deliberately ask "Can someone not in this group tell me what this group was doing?" I like how it gets students thinking and the brains behind it are not feeling pressure to identify themselves or feel judged. I also pondered on the stair step image on page 159. This made me reflect on the difference between asking a student to explain their reasoning compared to justifying their thought process. I didn't think much on the difference, but this section highlighted how justifying is a step before explaining. My favorite quote from this reading section was "The goal of building thinking classrooms is not to find engaging tasks for students to think about. The goal is to build engaged students that are willing to think about any task." This is true for not just math content. We want students to reflect and think about what they read, what they noticed in a science experiment, or think on the craft, structure, and elaboration of their writing vs just getting the writing assignment done.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing ideas about using anchor charts for taking notes, I love these ideas! These chapters left me with a lot of ideas and thoughts floating around in my mind. I want to continue to work on letting go of control and letting their be a little more "controlled chaos" where students are engaged, talking, and actively learning. Letting students have more freedom will help create autonomy which will strengthen their ability to make choices and think more. I really appreciated all the strategies shared around group work and how to build a community where students learn both collectively and individually. I loved the dialogue on pg. 138 where the two groups were joined together and said, "That must mean one of us has something to share. I wonder if it is you guys or us?" Students have so much to offer one another and getting them comfortable learning and working together will make for some really powerful experiences.
ReplyDeleteSupporting student ownership and autonomy in first grade is going to be a big shift. I think a big piece of it will be mobilizing knowledge throughout groups and helping students learn how to learn from their peers. Having students walk to other groups to get ideas, sharing their thinking with others and "teaching" without telling are steps that I imagine in helping students take ownership of their learning. I think that the hardest part for myself will be using student work to consolidate ideas as I am learning which big ideas and strategies should be highlighted for each lesson. Another thing I am thinking about is how I can take meaningful notes (anchor charts) that students will refer to in the future and how we can make charts as a class together. I could also see using graphic organizers at the end of year when students are able to write more.
ReplyDeleteI love everyones ideas about anchor charts too. I am still not confident how I want to move this into my classroom yet. Kindergarten and anchor charts go hand in hand, but geting them to use them is hard. Some of the ideas here have me thinking a little outside the box and hopefully I can implement something that will work for my classroom too.
ReplyDelete"A thinking classroom is a classroom where students think individually and collectively. the collective goes well beyond the limits of the group boundaries and encompasses the whole class". This quote resonated with me. As I was reading this portion of the book I noticed that students were doing gallery walks and making observations about other groups work and also using other groups as a source of knowledge. I love the idea that group work can expand to the whole class.
ReplyDeleteIn kindergarten autonomy is a challenging goal. I like the idea of intentional anchor charts that students can refer to in the future. As I think about setting my class up for the Fall, I wonder if I can make a space in my room where these charts can be accessible to students? Maybe a math focus wall or something similar to my writing center, which has a lot of notes that we use and refer to often. Creating autonomy in kindergarten is something I would like to learn more about. Maybe we can share any success stories we have this year.
ReplyDelete"The amount of thinking students were required to do, and did, was sharply reduced in situations where their actions were managed, even micromanaged." This quote was such an aha for me, it's extremely simple, yet so powerful. Finding the balance of student choice and autonomy, coupled with consistent and practiced routines and procedures, truly does create a classroom in which students thrive...and THINK. After reading these chapters, I realized my math block was full of interactions and partners problem solving (doing), we then would justify our thinking, and a few groups daily would usually get to explain, but not all groups would get to explain and teach. For the majority of the activities, groups were working in pairs, there was some passive interactions (looking at other groups work) but not nearly as much active interaction between, aside from gallery walks and times were groups were asked to join together. I feel this greatly affected engagement and the flow of the activities. I look forward to teaching and encouraging discourse between groups and hopefully an increase in knowledge mobility, engagement, and learning.
During these chapters I thought about how I can mobilize knowledge in Kindergarten. It might be a little more challenging than other grades but I did think about the anchor charts that we build and use together. I made it a big deal when we finished the chart and hung it on the wall. I also did this with the sound wall and word wall. Students used all these tools to help them in their work. Primary grades also love to help the teacher so that could be useful to help other students when they don’t know what to do or did not listen to the directions the first time. This could possibly take some of the pressure off of me to have all of the answers in class. We don’t take many notes but having students create some anchor charts or pictures for the directions in class could be helpful to them taking ownership of the new knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThe notetaking portion of this section is what really stood out to me... probably because I have an incoming 8th grader who, no doubt, has learned that notetaking is a mindless task meant for the sake of the teacher. This is reiterated by the fact that she said she is typically graded on her notes. Given that we have limited time with our students in MAP (30 minutes) it is often not the best use of our time to write notes. But I would like to see how we might summarize what we've worked on in the last 5 minutes of our time and go back to it 3 weeks later to see if it still makes sense. Perhaps we can work together and see if it is something that can blossom into an individualized task.
ReplyDelete