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.
Chapter 8 caused me to pause and think a great deal. I feel like in my previous practice, as students were solving problems on their white boards, I encouraged them to keep their eyes on their own board and "not copy". Chapter 8 spoke about mobilizing knowledge. I know as a teacher I am not the keeper of all knowledge. Students can learn just as much (if not more) from each other as peers. Incorporating this into my practice has been one of my biggest shifts this year. Modeling groups talking with one another and encouraging them to learn from each other has been huge. A few weeks ago I observed students teaching each other strategies step by step. I feel like this would not have happened last year.
ReplyDeleteIn Chapter 10, I began to consider how I can keep students up and moving rather than sitting on the carpet for the synthesis portions of my lesson.
The entirety of chapter 8 & mobilizing knowledge really resonated with me. As time has gone on this year, I've noticed that our math groups are getting better and better at working with each other, but I do still see moments of students wanting to guard their knowledge for themselves instead of sharing it with their teams & classmates. The term "mobilizing knowledge" is going to be one that sticks with me and one that I'll introduce to the class as a foundation of teamwork. I loved the quote, "Rather than being the source of knowledge in the room, teachers were working to mobilize that knowledge already in the room". I also really love the idea of encouraging kids to use their autonomy in their learning through interaction between different groups.
ReplyDeleteIn chapter 9, I loved learning about shifting the mode of engagement to increase challenge: doing -> justifying -> explaining -> teaching -> creating.
And in chapter 11, something that really spoke to me and something that I'll be implementing for sure is encouraging students to write "notes to their future forgetful selves". I think this is a brilliant way to have kids write down notes that will be meaningful to them!
One 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!
ReplyDelete