Thinking For or Thinking With?

We have all done it: thinking for our students.

It happens all the time.  We hand out an assignment sheet and, as we go over it line-by-line with the students, we tell them what to highlight, underline, or place a star by.    

We read a poem or a passage of Shakespeare with our students and end up retelling it in our own words so the kids will understand it.

In the midst of a lecture, we stop to remind students, “Write this down.” Or, worse, we just give them a copy of the lecture notes so all they have to do is listen.

We ask leading questions in a class discussion: “Don’t you see how the writer is using harsh diction to convey the theme of man’s inhumanity to man?” “So you’d use the distributive property to make sure the numbers in the parenthesis can be added, right?” “Of course, this reminds you of what happened during the New Deal Era, doesn’t it?” “The thesis of the article is right here, isn’t it?”

We ask them to pay attention while we do things to model how it’s done without letting them try it on their own. Watch me dissect this earthworm. Watch as I paint an entire picture.  Lookee here as I annotate an entire article. Listen as I explain what the poem means. Follow along as I read aloud.

We make all kinds of personal connections with the content we teach so the kids will see how relevant it is to their lives.

Their lives? Wait a minute. Those examples are from our lives.

We do a lot of thinking for our students, but how much thinking do we do with them?

Thinking with students is not the same as thinking for them. Instead of bearing the entire cognitive load, we can shift some (or most, and eventually all) of it to them by teaching students how to do the thinking themselves.

Sometimes this can be done by modeling part of the process and letting them take ownership of the rest. I read a little to get you started, and then you take over. I show you what’s going on in my head as I read by doing a think-aloud for the first paragraph and then ask you to annotate your thinking on the next three before I check in with you. Watch me do a little; now let’s try it together. Next, try it on your own.

Another way to think with your students is to engage in strategy talks. Let’s consider the purpose for taking these notes. What might be a good format for notes, given that purpose? Why do you think so?

For students who need more note-taking scaffolding, consider recommending a few options for ways to set up the notes and explain why each format or organizational structure might be useful. Then, gradually release that responsibility to the students, asking them to recommend a format and explain their choice.

Instead of telling them what to highlight, ask students to highlight or underline the most important word or phrase in a paragraph of text and then explain their choice. In lieu of reading the instructions to them and explaining them, have them read a little, mark the key points, and explain their markings to a partner; then, ask a few students to explain to see if they have it.

Ask students to do a little thinking on their own, and provide them with feedback on their thinking instead of the right answers.  

Like a parent teaching a child how to do laundry or tie a shoe, we may have to be content with less-than-perfect attempts at the start. I’d rather have a student come up with a slightly-flawed paraphrase of a Shakespearean soliloquy on her own than spoon-feed her the “right” answer that I came up with. With time and practice, the white socks come out white, the shoes stay tied, and the students are able to comprehend Elizabethan English on their own.

Become a co-conspirator in your students’ missions for success. Guide them to make deliberate decisions as they learn. Offer encouragement and feedback. Be okay with imperfection. Celebrate successes as well as failures because it is through our struggles that we learn and improve.

It’s difficult to break the habit of thinking for other people. I work on it every day. The first step is realizing when you are doing it. Then, figure out a way to back off and let them do the work. You’ll know you’ve succeeded when they can do these things without your assistance, even without your presence, and when they can use those newly-developed thinking skills to figure out how to tackle fresh obstacles they encounter.

I could write several more paragraphs and provide you more examples of exactly how to do this, but I don’t want to do all the thinking for you. You understand the situation:  we think too much; we do all the work; we coddle and hand-hold without allowing time for them to practice independently; we teachersplain when we should leave the explaining to them; we provide the examples and connect the dots. When we catch ourselves doing this, how can we shift the thinking back to our students?

In Defense of Turn and Talk

Several weeks ago at a literacy conference in Waco, I heard an impressive set of speakers talk for three days about reading and writing. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed a barrage of tweets detailing many of my takeaways from this rich learning experience. My tweets and retweets were digital-age “Amens” as these literacy gurus preached about the importance of student choice in reading, providing authentic reading and writing experiences, ways teachers can support and promote reading, and growing students to become more literate, discerning citizens.

One thing I didn’t tweet was an offhand comment made by one of the presenters. Just before he asked us to turn and talk with a neighbor about a question he posed, the speaker said, “Don’t you think we’ve kind of overdone ‘Turn and Talk’ in schools?” He said it as if the pair-share were some sort of plague spreading maliciously though classrooms, killing learning by forcing students to interact with one another. According to him, America’s teachers are Turn-and-Talking their students to death. Turn and Talk, he seemed to believe, is as passé as bottle flipping and fidget spinners.

As an educator who spends hours each week in classrooms, I have to respectfully disagree with the notion that we are asking students to talk with a neighbor too frequently or that the strategy is losing its power. The undisputed truth about classroom talk is that in most classrooms, teachers still do the majority of the talking. Full-class discussions usually involve only a fraction of the students and don’t give every kid the chance to work through the ideas on their own. The idea that we are asking our students to share too frequently seems absurd to me, but, having spent several days listening and agreeing with this particular literacy expert, I am trying to figure out where his opinion is coming from.

I’ve identified several ways Turn and Talk might go bad; let’s call them Turn and Talk Traps. Perhaps this student talk naysayer has experienced these pitfalls and is objecting based on his observations.

Making Turn and Talk a Thing: There’s a danger when using any learning strategy that the strategy itself may become something bigger than it ought to be. We make it a “thing” rather than just providing a topic, question, or prompt and asking our kids to talk with one another about it. When this happens, we risk the danger of making our strategies bigger than the learning they are supposed to facilitate. We turn them into elaborate productions.  We say things like, “Okay, kids, we are about to do a Turn and Talk,” as if we are saying, “Now it’s time to do a triple axel followed by a double lutz and a quadruple salchow.” Students don’t necessarily need to know the terminology behind every teacher move we make. Turning to a neighbor and talking about your learning can (and probably should) be a seamless part of our daily lessons, a habit we get into because we know that all our students—not just a few—deserve the opportunity to talk through and test out their ideas so they can develop complex understandings of their own and the learning will stick. Instead of “doing a Turn and Talk,” simply ask students to turn to a neighbor and talk. It’s really simple and effective.      

Nebulous Talk:  Another misstep is asking students to turn and talk without giving them direction or parameters for their discussion. This leaves them with uncertainty: What am I supposed to talk about? How long? When am I supposed to talk, and when am I supposed to listen? Who talks first? I’ve been guilty of stopping my lesson at what seems to be an appropriate spot and asking my students to discuss the content with their table neighbor. A handful of students talk while the others visit about their weekend or simply stare at one another, unsure of exactly what they are expected to say. Sometimes I’ve provided way too much time for my nebulous classroom talk so there is no sense of urgency about getting to the discussion. Student talk should be focused, succinct, and accompanied by clear expectations. Carefully planned questions can provide a spark for meaningful talk. Sentence frames and stems offer some structure and help students develop more sophisticated academic language. Talk can be timed; roles of each partner can be clarified. When the teacher has a clear plan for what is supposed to happen during this talk time, students don’t see this as an arduous add-on to their day.    

Turn and Talk Without a Follow Up: Paired student talk probably shouldn’t be an end in itself, but it can be meaningful as a lead-in to something else. For instance, posing a question to the entire class and allowing students to discuss it with a partner before opening it up to the full class gives students confidence to respond because they’ve tried their ideas out on a partner. Turn and Talk can precede student writing, aid students in summarizing and clarifying information in the midst of a lecture or video, serve as closure to a lesson (followed by a share-out of key takeaways), allow students to refine their own notes through comparison with another student’s, assist students in figuring out how to approach a problem, or help students set a personal goal or objective for the day. The way to make student talk worthwhile is to show students that it’s an integral part to their learning process and will improve their chances of success in our classrooms.

I’m sticking to my original stance. We haven’t done Turn and Talk to death. Perhaps we’ve done it poorly from time to time. When it’s done well—which isn’t that difficult to pull off with a little planning—paired student talk can be one of the most powerful tools for empowering students to make their learning meaningful, grow in their understanding, and clarify and reinforce their thinking. We could do a whole lot worse than making Turn and Talk our go-to strategy in the classroom.

What are your thoughts about incorporating student talk in your classroom? Turn to someone nearby and discuss that question for a minute. Afterwards, you can put some of these ideas into practice.      

Planning to Seem Unplanned

Besides the Fletcher’s Corny Dog stand, the “Birds of the World” show was my favorite part of the Texas State Fair. Alas, as of 2013, the bird show is no more, but I spent many a memorable hour sitting in the band shell and marveling as Groucho the parrot sang a pitchy rendition of “How Much is That Doggie in the Window;” laughing as the red-legged seriema, Sluggo, slammed a rubber lizard, Mr. Bill, repeatedly on a rock to demonstrate how these birds tenderize their dinner; and ducking when the Harris’s hawk grazed the heads of the audience in its beeline from the top of the Texas Star Ferris wheel to the treat-holding trainer below.

One of the best moments in the show was when they pulled a volunteer out of the audience and put her in the perfect position to get a photo of the 10-foot wingspan of a California condor as it soared toward her from the back of the amphitheater. Just as the enormous bird was approaching, another bird on the stage escaped its enclosure, causing confusion which ended in the volunteer’s falling backward into a pool of water, soaking her clothes and hair. Half of the audience howled with laughter while the other half grimaced in sympathy at this poor soul whose day and expensive camera were ruined by this soggy mishap.

The host of the show expressed sympathy through suppressed laughter as he called one of the trainers to take the volunteer backstage and get her cleaned up. The hapless volunteer later reappeared on the stage on the way back to her seat, only to be startled by a runaway bird who chased her back into hiding. By the end of the show, of course, the “volunteer” took a bow with the rest of the cast and then began drying her hair and clothes to get ready for the next show that day.       

This shtick was a part of the “Birds of the World” show for probably the last five years of its 15-year residency, and it never got old. Of course, after the first year, the rabid fans like me were in on the joke, but it was fun to watch the reactions of the audience and the feigned surprise of the host and other show personnel. They had obviously planned carefully to make this stunt look completely unplanned.

This moment of faux mayhem required a cast member in disguise who had to blend in as a convincing member of the audience and act realistically frightened, two trained birds behaving as instructed, a latch that appeared to malfunction on cue, the proper placement of a person by an onstage water feature, a crew who would respond to the “accident” as if it were truly unexpected, and a host who could all of this orchestrate this and look believably surprised and horrified without breaking character. Planning and preparation were crucial to pull this off.  

I feel like we can learn something about teaching from the bird show’s antics. The best teachers plan to make aspects of their class appear unplanned. There’s a difference between “unplanned” and “chaotic,” however. What I think we should aim for is a degree of spontaneity so we ensure that our instruction has a feeling of improvised curiosity.  

There’s a big difference, for instance, between saying to your class, “As I was reading this last night, I found this sentence that I thought was interesting; let’s look at it,” and handing out a worksheet of sentences for students analyze grammatically. It seems more spontaneous to say, “I wonder what would happen if we played around with the word order here,” than it does to display a PowerPoint slide with sentences to reword. Reading a text aloud yourself seems more authentic than listening to a recording of someone else reading. Asking students what they wondered as they were reading the article is more genuine than providing them with a pre-printed page of questions. Soliciting ideas from students and modeling the writing of a draft of a paper is more engaging than displaying an already-written essay on the screen, especially one written by some other teacher. The read-aloud poem you share with your students becomes more interesting when you say, “I found this poem I think is really great,” than when you introduce it by saying, “Turn to page 12 in your poetry packet, and let’s find today’s Poem of the Day.” And allowing students to share the words they found challenging in a reading assignment and then to decide which ones are useful enough to put on a class word wall will increase buy-in better than giving them a list of important vocabulary words to memorize because the word wall is their list, not yours.  

I remember chemistry labs in high school where we were simply following a series of instructions to reach a predetermined outcome. I recall many Q&A sessions in school where the teacher clearly knew all the right answers already and was waiting for someone to respond to her predetermined specifications so that she could feign excitement as she said, “Exactly right! That is the theme of the story!” Though I know they were abundant,  I don’t remember any worksheets. . . because no one remembers worksheets. Ditto for study questions. None of these things seemed at all spontaneous or interesting to me (the student) or to the teacher, who (as I saw it) must have the world’s most boring job.   

The most memorable moments in school—not coincidentally, also the ones where the most learning occurred and stuck—were the ones where the teacher exhibited curiosity along with us, where the outcome didn’t seem predestined, and where the classroom seemed like a community of learners and discoverers.

Spontaneous teaching like this takes preparation and planning. Even the most experienced teachers flop more often than they soar when they try to wing it. Plan your questions carefully. Rehearse your instructions and explanations. Carefully orchestrate your openings, transitions, segues, and conclusions. But do what you can to make all of these things seem fresh and alive to your students—as if you are experiencing fresh curiosity right along with them as they learn.

Introducing the phrase “I wonder. . .” into your lessons is one way to begin

That host of the bird show did the same soggy volunteer routine four times a day throughout the run of the State Fair year after year, and he never let it become stale. Each new audience experienced it as if it were an entirely unplanned accident, which is what made it so brilliant. In the same way, we can create these brilliant moments of spontaneity in our classrooms with careful planning and consideration for what the learning experience looks like through the eyes of the learners.       

Defining Your Vision for the Start of School

 I’m going to suggest that you do something in the next few days that you don’t have time for but that will make a huge positive difference for your school year.

I realize that the first day is looming around the corner. Your to-do list keeps getting longer. You’ve been professionally developed and have watched your required e-learning updates about school safety, sexual harassment, and ethical behavior. Some of you have decorated your classrooms with this year’s hottest Pinterest-approved styles while others are still awaiting the go-ahead to unpack boxes after the summer’s renovation. There are IEPs to gather and digest, seating charts to create, Google Classrooms to set up, and curriculum documents to study. The campus Xerox machine is working 24/7 (or, perhaps, has stopped working due to exhaustion). Conscientious students who’ve come in early to walk their schedules keep poking their heads into your classroom in hopes of getting a glimpse of their new teacher. You haven’t slept soundly in days because of that recurring nightmare where it’s the first day of classes and you can’t find your own classroom.

I know you’re going to balk at the idea of doing what I’m about to suggest—and I wouldn’t blame you—but I’m going to suggest it anyway:

Take 15 minutes sometime before the first day of school to sit down somewhere free of distractions and list the core beliefs that guide the work you do every day.

  

Think of these core beliefs as tiny statements of purpose, as mini mission statements. These are the how, the why, and the so what for everything you do in your job. Articulating what you believe helps you sift through all the debris to focus your attention on what really matters. When you have a decision to make, these core belief statements can guide you. Most important, writing these beliefs down increases the opportunity that you will actually put them into action.   

There’s no magic number of statements that should be on your core beliefs list. Try to keep your list manageable because I don’t want it to be overwhelming or unwieldy. I started out with a goal of 5 beliefs but ended up adding a few as I continued to think about it. Your list is not an unalterable document; it probably will (and should) evolve over time.

Here’s what I came up with during my 15 minutes of brainstorming:    

    

My Core Beliefs at This Moment (Subject to Revision Because, Well, Things Change)

1. Infuse joy into all you do in the classroom. Learning shouldn’t be a drudgery.     

2. Students should view their teachers as lifelong learners, readers, writers, problem solvers, and curious questioners.

3. Relationships matter more than you think.   

4. Strategic decisions about what goes on during class time can eliminate a lot of ineffective, soul-sucking work outside of class time.    

5. It’s every teacher’s job to teach students to read, write, think, speak, study, organize themselves, and be decent human beings. These transferable life skills matter more than content.  

6. Every student deserves the best education possible. That means high expectations in a safe, supportive environment.

7. Students don’t know how far they can go. It’s up to you to spot their potential, help them see it, too, and give them a nudge to get there.

8. When given the choice between pointing out something someone did wrong and pointing out what they are doing right, give your attention to what you’d like to see more of.   

I’m planning to print and post this list on the bulletin board next to my computer so I can see it often. On the days when I need some refocusing, I will revisit that list as a reminder to keep me on track. Perhaps you’ll want to do the same.

I wish you a purposeful, productive, fulfilling year during which you keep your attention on the things that matter. Let me know how I can help.