We All Deserve a Break

I don’t know who is more excited about Spring Break bring right around the corner: the students or the teachers. We all need and deserve a break. 

The spring semester is relentless. After the tease of a not-quite-two-week winter vacation, January hits with a vengeance. There’s no adjustment period like there is at the beginning of school. We hit the ground running and charge into February, the shortest month with the most stuff crammed into it. Add to that the perils of flu season and all the turmoil that accompanies avoiding getting sick, actually being sick, recovering from  actually being sick, trying to catch up all you missed while you were sick, and helping everyone else catch up from the school days they missed because they were sick. The sun goes on an extended holiday. Days are cold, and those that aren’t cold are dreary in other ways. Grades have been accumulating for weeks, and the day of reckoning is near. Meanwhile, students think summer is a lot closer than it is and haven’t realized the consequences of shutting down early with months remaining in the year. We definitely need a week off. 

Breaks are important, and not just the ones that involve spending time away from school. Taking breaks within the class period keeps students fresh and vibrant so they can keep going strong as we ask them to do the hard work of learning. I’ve written before about brain breaks. These tiny pauses in instruction re-energize students and allow them to reset before diving back into the tasks at hand.  

While I continue to support the idea of providing regular brain breaks, my thinking on what these breaks should look like has evolved over time. In a classroom where every minute is precious and so many objectives must be met over the course of a unit, a semester, or a year, I suggest we stop thinking about brain breaks and start considering how to incorporate more state changes into our lessons. 

Breaks imply the need to get away from what we are doing. Breaks are escapes. Breaks don’t involve work. We need breaks from things we find grueling, tedious, and miserable. If I say, “Let’s take a break because you guys have been writing for the last 30 minutes,” I am acknowledging that writing is a terrible task, one you’d be a fool to enjoy doing (which is not the truth, though some of you are nodding your heads in agreement). If the subsequent break has nothing whatsoever to do with writing or English, I not only send the message that there’s nothing fun about the subject I teach but I also cause students who were in the zone to lose their momentum. After our raucous rock, paper, scissors tournament, getting students to settle back down and write for the remainder of the period might be an impossibility. The brain break I gave my students was an enjoyable mini-vacation, and now they have to return to the workhouse with a sense of Monday morning dread. 

State changes, on the other hand, don’t have to be departures from the curriculum. Think of them as variations on how the work is being done. If the students have been silent for a while, let them talk. If they’ve been stationary, get them up and moving. If they’ve been reading, let them write, speak, or draw. State changes are the crux of good teaching, whether you are working with kids or adults. Doing the same thing in the same way for too long creates the educational equivalent of bedsores.  

If I were teaching a class where students had been hard at work writing for half an hour, a state change would allow them to reset their brains. In this writing class scenario, a state change might look like one of these:

• Stand up and talk with your neighbor about what you’re writing. Neighbor, your job is to ask one question to get your partner to think more deeply about what he or she is writing.
• Go back to the beginning of your paper and read it aloud to yourself in a whisper. 
• Get out of your chair, paper in hand. Read your writing aloud to yourself. Every time you begin a new paragraph, turn 90 degrees clockwise. (This reminds students of the importance of paragraphing and makes them think more deliberately about the organization of their writing.)
• Switch papers with a neighbor. Read your neighbor’s paper. Find one thing the writer did that you love and one thing you have a question about. Be prepared to share them with the writer.
• Think about a goal you’d like to work on for the remainder of the writing period today. Write it down on a sticky note. Stand and share your goal with someone sitting nearby. Now place that sticky note on the corner of your desk so I will know what you’re working on and can conference with you about it if needed.  
• Roll your head around in a circle and think about the main idea of your essay. Roll it the other direction and consider how you are communicating that main idea to the reader. Massage your writing hand with your other hand and contemplate the words you might be using repeatedly in your writing and brainstorm other words you can use to keep your writing varied and interesting. Roll your shoulders forward in circles and think about how you are linking your ideas together in your writing. Roll your shoulders backward and visualize what comes next in your paper. Now get back to writing. 

Each of these state changes allows students to think more deeply about their writing while doing something different to give their brain a rest from the actual act of writing. Each of these supports my goals as an educator. Each one prepares the students to continue to work productively on their writing for the remainder of class. 

State changes can also be an excellent time to review content and connect learning. In a math class, I might ask the students to pause for a mental math break, having them calculate a running total in their heads as I give them instructions: “Multiply 7 and 6. Divide that total in half. Add four.  Divide by five. Multiply by 12.” I might ask students to explain a definition or a process to another student. If students had been taking notes, I could ask them to stop and summarize their notes orally, to sketch a picture representing what they just learned, or to pose a question about the notes. 

Allegedly, adults have attention spans of 10 to 20 minutes. Children and teens have shorter ones. State changes acknowledge this reality and accomodate for it. Like readjusting your car seat in the midst of a long drive or changing the radio station to a different style of music, state changes awaken the brain, keep you alert, and allow you to keep going. 

State changes make the time in class more tolerable so that full-scale breaks aren’t needed as frequently. If you’re not already doing so, take a look at your daily lessons and consider how you can build in frequent state changes to refocus your students and allow them to approach learning in many ways. Writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading—the five key components of AVID’s WICOR acronym—inspire options for state changes that will reinvigorate your students after the break so they can keep going until the end of the year.   

Sometimes, however, like right now, people like you need more than just a state change. You need a vacation. Enjoy your hard-earned break, and make the most of it. You and your students deserve it. 

Eleven Beliefs About Student Talk

The more I observe students in schools, the more convinced I am that the best way to transform an ordinary classroom into a vibrant hive of learning is to let the kids talk. Most young people are naturally social and enjoy interacting with their peers. Why not figure out ways to channel those inclinations into productive educational conversations? To give you something to ponder on this topic, I’ve composed a list of eleven of my beliefs about student talk:

1. The people doing the talking are the people doing the thinking.

If you, the teacher, are doing most of the talking in class, you are probably physically and mentally exhausted at the end of the day. Furthermore, you may have no idea whether your students know or understand anything you said to them. If you plan lessons that require students to do more talking, your students will be doing the thinking, which means they will be doing the learning, too.    

2.  Structured student conversation should occur multiple times in every instructional period.

This belief has two key components: the conversation should 1) be structured and 2) occur repeatedly. 1) Structure:  Free-form conversation (“Discuss this in your table groups…”) quickly degenerates into off-task chatting. Adding some structure (more specific topics or questions to address, sentence starters or frames, time limits, explicit rules about how the speaking is supposed to proceed, roles for each member of the conversation) will ensure that the talk time is effective. 2) Repeat occurrence:  Learners need brain breaks, and student talk is a great way to reset brains and reinforce understanding before, during, and after cognitive activities. Stopping to allow a two-minute partner share during a lecture not only allows students to explain what they’ve learned but it also wakes them up. Paired conversation could occur after every question the teacher asks during a class. A well-designed lesson provides numerous opportunities for students to talk to one another.        

3.  Full-class discussions, if they have to occur at all, should take place after the students have talked in pairs or other small groups.

I am not a fan of the full-class discussions. I didn’t enjoy them when I was in school. I don’t enjoy them now in professional learning scenarios as an adult. Full-class discussions are a boring beatdown. It’s a back-and-forth dialogue between a teacher or presenter and a handful of interested participants. Everyone else has mentally checked out or is waiting for that one blabbermouth to shut up. If you must have full-group discussions, at least let your students talk about the question or topic beforehand in smaller groupings where everyone can participate. That’s when the real learning occurs. The subsequent large-group discussion can be a quick check for understanding and an opportunity for students to ask the questions that came up as they were talking with their partners.  

4.  Students write like they speak. Teaching students to speak in academic register improves their speaking and writing abilities.

We don’t speak the same way in every situation. What might be appropriate with friends in a casual setting isn’t the way people speak in an academic or professional environment. Most adults have learned to speak in various language registers: formal, informal, academic, parental, etc. Teaching students to speak like experts gives them an automatic edge in the world. I’ve graded many a paper from a student who writes in teenspeak, their writing peppered with likes and you knows. Who can blame them if they have no awareness of shifting between language registers for various purposes? When you provide your students with templates for academic speech, show them how to link ideas together with transitional words and phrases, and equip them with academic vocabulary in your subject, you are teaching them a new language that, once it becomes more automatic, will transfer into their writing.    

5.  If I can explain it, I probably understand it.

Have you ever had that experience where you read about something or listen to someone explain a topic and then realize, when you attempt to tell someone else about it, that you have some significant gaps in your comprehension? Students shouldn’t discover they don’t understand something as they are taking a test over that topic. Asking students to explain concepts to one another allows them to check their own understanding. (I love the idea of one student explaining a topic and the other student paraphrasing what that person said after listening to the explanation.) The more you ask students to talk about your subject, the stronger their understanding will become.  

6.  Students need think time and writing time before they speak.

I’ve been guilty many times of posing a question to the entire class and instantly beginning a discussion over the topic. Of course, there was always one eager quick-thinker who jumped in to answer the question instantly. Many of the other students were still trying to form an answer as I was moving on to another question. Most, I fear, never even bothered with the thinking because they knew someone else would beat them to it. I learned to try this instead: I posed a thought-provoking question and allowed students a minute or two to write their response in their interactive notebook. Then, I asked students to discuss in pairs before calling on a few students at random to share their answers with the class. Providing that think time helped struggling students come up with something to say and gave all students a chance to develop deeper thoughts on paper instead of responding quickly in a more superficial way.

7.   Student talk doesn’t have to be a big deal if it’s an everyday occurrence.

Once my student became accustomed to interacting with one another, they knew what to do and did it willingly and automatically. I established “elbow partners” and “quads” so that there was no confusion when I asked them to turn and talk.  

8.  Students become more confident sharing their ideas with the class if they have had time to rehearse them with a smaller group first.

Speaking in front of the class is a fate worse than death for many students. Part of their trepidation comes from a fear of being wrong or of being made fun of for a “stupid” answer. When students have an opportunity to try out their responses in front of a significantly smaller audience, they become more confident when asked to share with the whole class. They also learn from the responses from others and may use what they’ve learned to refine their own response if called upon to share.   

9.  Putting a grade on student talk makes the talk inauthentic.

In the real world, we aren’t graded on the frequency or quality of our speaking in meetings and conversations. The value of conversations and discussions comes from the exchange of ideas, building onto these ideas, civil cognitive conflict, and the resulting learning that occurs. When teachers decide to grade discussions, the talk becomes selfish, with each student seeking to demonstrate whatever skills will earn the desired grade. Make the talk itself the reward. Emphasize the learning that occurs. Reinforce the moves the students make that you’d like to see more of in future discussions.  

10.  To effectively facilitate student talk, teachers have to plan ahead.

Low-level, closed-ended questions and topics don’t generate much conversation or student interest. Take the time to prepare stimulating ideas for students to talk about. Examine your lesson plans for the perfect moments to incorporate a check-in conversation or an open-ended question to spur further exploration. Bounce ideas off your colleagues in planning sessions to infuse speaking experiences throughout the lesson cycle to engage students at many levels.

11.  Students won’t get better at speaking if they don’t have frequent practice.

Don’t throw up your hands in defeat after the first attempt at promoting student conversation fizzles. “Our kids can’t…” is the phrase that killed more learning than any other one. I won’t get better at learning to speak Spanish if I don’t practice speaking with others. Similarly, students won’t get better at speaking unless they do it all the time. And the quality of their speaking won’t improve if teachers don’t give them practice speaking like experts. It may not be pretty at first. If you’ve attended the fall concert of first-year orchestra students, you know what I mean. But keep at it, and pretty soon you’ll have a symphony of conversation occurring automatically in your classroom.  

Winners and Losers

“We are the champions, my friend.

And we’ll keep on fighting ‘til the end.
We are the champions. We are the champions.

No time for losers

‘Cause we are the champions

Of the world….”

Those lyrics conjure up memories of big-haired seventh graders in tight jeans swaying back and forth and yelling along with Queen’s rock anthem in the cafetorium at the Wilson Middle School social back in the early 80s.

“No time for losers.” That reminds me of a saying often attributed to race car driver Dale Earnhardt, Sr.: “Second place is the first loser.” Nike popularized this as a slogan for their ad campaigns in the 1996 Olympic games. Ricky Bobby switched the phrase up a bit in the film Talladega Nights when he proclaimed, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.”

I think I’m pretty safe in saying that our society’s obsession with winning and losing is not new. We seem to delight in ranking ourselves and others. It’s not enough to call someone a winner; we revel in calling someone else a loser.

In recent weeks, the state has unveiled a controversial new school rating system that assigns letter grades from A to F to public schools. The preliminary scores of some schools with satisfactory ratings on the old system plummeted to Cs, Ds, and Fs under the new one. A whole new crop of “losers” has now surfaced. Teachers, administrators, schools, and districts are horrified, yet politicians seem unfazed (and perhaps even pleased) by the unflattering light shed on many schools and districts.         

We all know what it feels like to lose. Hopefully, we’ve all also experienced the feeling of winning, too. Winning is a motivator, but perpetual winners sometimes become complacent. Losing can motivate, too, but it can also have the opposite effect, leaving the losers to lose hope and quit trying.

Education, as I see it, doesn’t have to be a competition at all. There’s no need to be fixated on creating a hierarchical structure if success for all is what we aim to achieve.

I know that at this point some of you are worried because you fear I’m going to be one of those people who suggests we give everyone a ribbon just for showing up. That’s not the answer. Being a chronic non-athlete, I received many an unearned ribbon or trophy in my childhood, and I know from experience that those victories had little impact on me one way or another. I knew I hadn’t earned those awards, and they meant nothing to me. They just created one more item I had to throw away when I eventually moved out of my parents’ house.

My argument isn’t about eliminating criteria for success and deeming everyone a winner; instead, it’s about promoting excellence and equity with standards-based measures that we hope everyone will achieve.

Isn’t the goal of public education, after all, to create an educated public? I want to believe that everyone--the kid down the block, the woman in the car next to mine at the stoplight, the person in front of me in the voting line, the teenager serving my dinner at Popeye’s, the mechanic fixing my brakes--has succeeded in an educational setting that ensures they can think, reason, read, write, calculate, follow instructions, listen critically, solve problems, analyze, evaluate, and express their ideas clearly.     

What I don’t want is to wonder which of these people were the winners and which were the losers in the game of education. Which ones succeeded beyond expectations, and which fell further and further behind until they and everyone else gave up on them?

I firmly believe that collaboration promotes learning. Most students learn from interactions with others. In the 21st century workplace, collaboration is an essential skill, a skill we have to help students develop with practice over time.  

Competition is the enemy of collaboration. Why should I work together with you if I hope to end up ranked in a higher position than you? If someone has to win by surpassing others, there’s no advantage to collaboration.

In a world where frantic parents badger their child’s elementary school teachers for just a hint about how their little darling is doing in relation to his or her classmates and where parents gain self esteem by broadcasting their kids’ achievements on social media, competition isn’t likely to vanish completely overnight. But I think it would do us all a service to reflect on the consequences--intended and unintended--of competition in our schools. And among our schools.

Teachers can start in their own classrooms. How can you change the climate to one where every success is applauded by the class as a whole? How can you motivate all to succeed by allowing everyone an equal opportunity for success? How can you allow every student to make as much progress as possible during the short time he or she is in your class?

If everyone receives a great education regardless of school, teacher, district, socioeconomic background, or location, doesn’t our entire society win?

The One-Week WICOR Challenge

One of the best ways to take AVID schoolwide and promote top-quality learning for every student in every classroom is to pay attention to the strategies you’re using to engage your students. By taking my One-Week WICOR Challenge, you can become aware of how frequently and consistently you’re using AVID’s five components of instruction (writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading) with your students.

How do I take the One-Week WICOR Challenge?

I’m glad you asked. Simply make a chart, one for each prep you teach, with the days of the week and the five parts of WICOR on it (or you can use mine here). As you go through your week, take note of when and how you address each of the five areas.

For instance, if your students read an article, discuss it with a partner, and then write a summary of what they discussed, you’ve just used reading, collaboration, and writing. Write what you did on your chart.

This link will take you to a printable handout listing many aspects of WICOR, just in case you want some clarification of the types of strategies that fall under each category.

What do I do with this once I’m finished?

You don’t have to do anything with it. The AVID police aren’t going to storm your classroom to ask for verification of your WICOR activity. What I’d suggest, however, is that you use the chart as a self-diagnostic to guide you in planning for your class.

Good instruction addresses all areas of WICOR, but some teachers have a hard time including all of them in their lessons. If you notice that you’ve had two days in a row with no student collaboration, perhaps it’s time to work in an activity--big or small--that allows students to talk with a partner or trio. If you discover that students seldom write in your class, consider asking students to write a few sentences to summarize what they’re learning and hand it in as an exit card. When test time rolls around, if you’re not doing it already, think about helping students understand how to study for your course--an act that involves organization of time, materials, and content as well as inquiry.

If you discover that you’re using a balance of  WICOR strategies routinely in your class, pat yourself on the back and know that you’re helping campus efforts to take AVID schoolwide. Your students and your AVID Site Team will thank you!

Breaking a Bad Habit

I always envied teachers who could lead class discussions with ease. You know the ones. Their students sit raptly as the teacher conducts a discussion, calling on volunteers (or “voluntelling” less eager students) to answer question after question the teacher poses to the entire class. In my first years of teaching, that was my instructional go-to model--whether we were talking about a piece of literature or pointing out the important aspects of a work of art--yet I didn’t feel like I was very good at it. Nonetheless, nearly every lesson of mine featured a section (sometimes a lengthy one) during which I asked questions and the students answered them.

Now that I have a little more experience, I realize that my question-and-answer discussion model was problematic for several reasons.

My classroom Q&A resembled a giant game of tennis with me on one side and the class on the other. I lobbed a question, someone went after it, I responded with the same question directed to another student or backhanded a different one, and the volley continued. If an observer had been charting the interaction, it would have looked like this:

Notice that the students were directing all of their talk in my direction and that some students dominated the discussion while others made it through the period without saying anything at all. While I’d like to believe that those silent students were hanging on their classmates’ every answer as they listened intently, I’m afraid the reality was that many of them were paying only partial attention or were zoned out completely.   

At the end of the period, I would have patted myself on the back for my students’ lively discussion and mastery of the content. If I thought about it more carefully, however, I would realize that all I could say for certain is that someone in my class knew the answer to each of the questions. I would have no idea whether every student understood the material. The individual students, who had caught on that if they didn’t call attention to themselves one of their eager, impulsive classmates would blurt out the answer (saving them the trouble of thinking), would have no idea what they knew or didn’t know.

Furthermore, this back-and-forth Q&A with me always on the receiving end was exhausting. I was doing at least half of the work, which meant my students were collectively doing the other half. Mathematically, the average student in a 25-person class was working for 2% of the discussion time--an unacceptably low number.

Over time, it occurred to me that leading an effective class discussion required me to break one old habit and replace it with new ones.

My bad habit was asking a question that I expected one student to answer in a discussion.

I have worked to replace it with a combination of two better habits.

The first is a pair-share. When I catch myself about to ask the class a discussion-type question, I stop myself and say, “In just a moment, when I say ‘go,’ turn and talk with an elbow partner about this question for 30 seconds. Go!” At that moment, every student is engaged in conversation about the topic, as speaker and/or listener, instead of the handful who would have paid attention to my full-class discussion and felt brave enough to contribute. After students have discussed in pairs, I call on a few of them to share. Students who might not have volunteered to share on their own have now had the chance to try out their answers on another student. They also have the option to share with the class an idea or insight their partner brought to the discussion.  The result? More confident, thoughtful student responses with increased participation.  

My other replacement habit is to precede a class discussion with a quickwrite. I ask a question and then let students take a moment to think on paper about their answer before we talk about it as a class. Sometimes, when I’m feeling extra adventurous, I ask students to pair-share after their quickwrite and before we discuss.

These new habits aren’t fancy or revolutionary. They’re easy to implement. All I have to do is remember to stop myself before I allow a classroom discussion to occur and insert some strategy that requires every student to think and respond. Not only do my subsequent discussions have more depth and buy-in, but I feel content knowing that my students are working at least as hard or harder than I am. 

Socratic Seminar FAQs

Conducting your first Socratic Seminar can be a scary endeavor.  Like the first time you tried to clear a hurdle in track, play a piano sonata, cook a soufflé, program a VCR (remember those?), fold a fitted sheet, stand in the tree pose in yoga, or knit a scarf, there’s always potential for disaster and room for improvement.  I’ve assembled a few Frequently Asked Questions about Socratic Seminars to help ease you into the idea and encourage you to try this with your students soon!

Q.  What’s a Socratic Seminar?

A. Good question! I’ll give you the short answer and let you do some exploring on your own if you want to know more. A Socratic Seminar is a student-led discussion—usually about a text—with the goal of deepening the collective understanding of the participants. It gets its name from Socrates, the Greek philosopher who was put to death for corrupting the minds of Athenian youth by making them think. Socrates also asked questions, which is something students do during the seminar; they question the text and one another to explore the topic more deeply. Typical Socratic Seminars take place with the class in one giant circle, but variations exist, such as the Fishbowl (two concentric circles), Pilot-Copilot Formation (discussed later), and several smaller Socratic Seminars simultaneously taking place in one classroom. It’s important to distinguish the Socratic Seminar from a debate; there are no sides, and this isn’t a place for arguing. Cheesy as it sounds, everyone’s a winner in a Socratic Seminar if they come out knowing more than they did before they began.

Q.  What do I do with students who are shy or don’t have anything to say?

A.  Ideally, all students will participate in the discussion.  In reality, some students are terrified to share their ideas with others or to speak aloud in class.  The first solution is to do whatever you can to make sure your classroom is a supportive environment where all students feel safe contributing.  Another is to make sure students are prepared prior to the Socratic Seminar.  Spend some time with the text, giving the students clear guidelines for annotation and text marking.  Have them prepare questions ahead of time.  The more familiar they are with the piece, the more likely they will be to contribute.  When selecting a format for your Socratic Seminar, consider a Pilot-Copilot formation, which allows all students to participate as you pause to have each “cockpit crew” chat with one another about the topic at various times during the discussion.  Also, selecting an engaging text will encourage students to speak up because they’ll have an opinion and will want to be heard.  Giving students a chance to do a brief reflection or exit card at the end of the seminar will allow a reluctant student to share his or her ideas with you; if you talk individually with that student later and praise the ideas, you’ll build some confidence that may result in participation next time. 

Q.  Do I have to grade the Socratic Seminar?

A.  No.  I am a big advocate for reinforcing learning for the sake of learning.  When you ramp up the pressure by grading the number and/or quality of students’ participation, you’ll find that you lose the collaborative nature of the Socratic Seminar.  Students will quit listening to one another and will think only of themselves and their grade.  You know your students have missed the point of the Socratic Seminar when they rush up to you after class with a look of desperation to ask whether they spoke enough times and what grade they made.  Also, if you don’t have to worry about tracking and assessing comments for every student in the discussion, you can enjoy and appreciate the discussion yourself—it’s much more rewarding for everyone involved. 

     

Q.  If I don't grade the discussion as you suggested, then how do I keep the kids accountable?

A.  If you must attach a grade to the seminar, consider grading their pre-work (text marking and question preparation) and a reflection they complete after the seminar.  The post-discussion reflection could contain thoughts about the content of the discussion, the quality of the discussion itself, areas for improvement in the future, comments that the student was unable to make during the discussion, or whatever you deem important.  Participation can be a factor in your grade, but also consider adherence to the norms of discussion, nonverbal behavior, and other factors.   

Q.  I teach _____, and my kids won’t ever be able to do a Socratic Seminar because…

A.  You're right.  As long as you believe your kids won't be able to do it, they probably won’t.  But if you change your mind, I can tell you that Socratic Seminar works with all subjects and all levels of kids.  The level of student talk may not always rise to your standard of excellence at first, but with some coaching, practice, and debriefing, they'll improve.  If your students need more scaffolding, consider providing them with some discussion starter stems, possible ways to begin a comment in an academic discussion.  Spend some time afterward praising the things your students did well.  Offer tips and specific targets for improvement before each Socratic Seminar.  When Socratic Seminars become something you do frequently rather than just being a one-time special occasion event, you'll find that the students love them and will begin to talk like scholars.  (Oh, and, by the way, your question wasn't a question.)

Q.  Does the Socratic Seminar have to be a culminating activity at the end of a unit?

A.  Not at all.  This is a great way to have students examine a text or other material in detail before a writing assignment or activity.  I have a colleague in social studies who has her students participate in a Socratic Seminar to discuss a set of documents prior to writing an AP document-based question (DBQ).  This kind of discussion can ensure the students have thought about all aspects of a poem or short story before writing an essay on it in a literature class.  If you become accustomed to the idea of a Socratic Seminar’s purpose being to help the group come to a deeper shared understanding of the meaning of something, it’s logical to use this strategy at various points in a lesson cycle.  I find they're even useful as a preparatory activity for a unit to build anticipation and interest (like the time I brought in the world’s most hideous vase—four feet tall, chartreuse, fuzzy velour—and had a discussion about how we determine whether something is art).   

Q. What kinds of works are suitable to discuss in a Socratic Seminar?

A.  You name it, and it can probably be discussed.  I've seen (or heard people tell of) successful seminars over films, artworks, political cartoons, novels, documentaries, political debates, television commercials, videos of a sports competition, websites, math problems, sets of statistics, maps, editorials, poems, plays, websites, musical performances, songs, music videos, and short stories.       

Q.  What’s the biggest mistake you've made with Socratic Seminars?

A.  My students were reading the 59-chapter, 450-page opus Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and we had—as a culminating assessment—a Socratic Seminar over the entire novel.  Our great expectation was that students answered one another’s questions while supplying relevant textual evidence from the novel (ie. direct quotations).  I spent a painful 90-minute block schedule period watching my hapless students dig desperately through that giant book they'd (allegedly) read once to find a quote to back up their ideas.  The pressure was immense, and only a few students with prodigious memories or incredible annotation skills emerged from the great quotation hunt unscathed.  The tension was palpable; tears were shed. I learned from that experience that choosing a text of a more manageable size allows everyone to be (literally) on the same page and participate in the discussion at a deeper, more thoughtful level.      

Q.  Do you have any final bits of advice?

A. Leave time to debrief the discussion and the process.  Allow students to talk about what flew and what flopped.  If you used an inner-outer circle (fishbowl) arrangement, solicit feedback from those in the outer circle about what went well and how things could have been better.  And even if your first Socratic Seminar is a disaster, try it again.  Let go of the reins and let the students talk.  You'll be surprised at how brilliant they can be.   

If you let them, they will talk…and they will say smart things. 

Hi, Teacher, It's Me

Hi, Teacher, it's me.

I'm the one who sits in the row on the side of your classroom, second seat from the back. I don't sit up in the front with the kids who cause trouble and don't do their work. You and I haven't talked much. I never raise my hand. But I show up every day.  I try to do my work. and I don't like to call attention to myself.  

I don't think I am very smart. Sometimes I think I understand what I'm learning. At other times, I'm not sure.

It helps when I talk about what I'm learning. Sometimes if I can explain it, then I know I understand it. 

But please don't call on me. When you call on me and I don't know the answer, that's the worst. 

I don't want the whole class to know that I'm not very smart.

We spend a lot of time in class talking. "Class discussion," you call it.  You do most of the talking, actually. And two or three of the other kids, the ones who raise their hands or blurt out answers. It's not really much of a discussion.   

Usually, you ask the questions, and those two or three kids answer them. If no one knows the answer, you answer it for us. 

Most days, I can just sit there and listen.  

Are you really tired at the end of the day from talking so much?

You work a lot harder than we do in your class. I don't think the others have figured out that if we just sit there, you will eventually do the thinking for us.

You know what would be helpful? Let me talk through my ideas with a classmate. I don't mind talking with a friend. I just don't want to share in front of everyone before I've had the chance to try out my answer on someone else.

I have another teacher who does this. He calls it "Think, Pair, Share." When there's a big question, instead of discussing it as a class, we first think for a minute about it individually. Sometimes we do a quick write. Then, we share our thoughts with someone else (that's the "Pair" part). After that, the teacher calls on some of us to share with the class. It's not so scary that way. My answer is our answer--mine and my partner's. When the teacher calls on us, it's okay for us to say what our partner said. I feel smarter then.

I hate to say it, but we need to work harder in your class. Not more homework. Homework is a pain, and you can just copy the answers from your friends in the cafeteria before school.  We should work harder in your class.

I may never tell you this, but I like it when you are prepared, when you make us work hard, when you let us talk to one another about what we are studying, and when you fill up the time with interesting activities where we are busy learning.

It's not so fun for us just to listen to you. Believe me, we listen to teachers all day. Try it sometime. It's the most boring thing in the world.

But it's school. Maybe school is supposed to be boring.

The WICOR of Reading: Reading and Collaboration

Many of us think of reading as an isolated activity. We hole up in our comfiest chair on a cold and drizzly Saturday afternoon and immerse ourselves in a good book. Or we confine ourselves to a study carrel in a library and focus our concentration on a textbook or research article. Sometimes, we gather in groups to talk about our reading--as in a book club--but the reading itself is done by ourselves away from others.

The idea of collaboration and reading sharing the same sentence seems antithetical to most teachers; however, to reach the learners who struggle with reading rigorous texts, we have to allow them to tap into the collective brainpower of more than just themselves.

The next time you're tempted to have a full-class discussion over a reading, try to prevent having the "discussion" turn into a dialogue between you (the "expert" teacher) and a handful of your participating students. Allow every student to contribute by incorporating some pair-share or trio-share time prior to (or instead of) full-class discussion. Sharing thoughts and ideas with a partner is safer than talking in front of the entire class. Also, a student who has the support of a partner or group is more likely to feel comfortable sharing an idea of her own (or of a groupmate) when called upon to do so.

Jigsawing is a collaborative strategy you can use with a lengthy text or one that can easily be broken up into smaller parts. Teachers break up a text into parts, assign parts for students to read, and then allow students who read different sections summarize what they read in a group of students who did not read their section. Once all group members have reported on their reading, the entire group should have an overall understanding of the text. I've seen this done with magazine or newspaper articles, parts of a textbook chapter, and even chapters in a novel.

Reciprocal Teaching is a strategy that requires a group to collaborate to make sense of a text by practicing the skills that accomplished readers do automatically. In the full version of the Reciprocal Teaching process, students form groups of five and are each given a role to play while reading the text.

1. Predict:  Make predictions about the text and back that up with evidence. 
2. Visualize:  Create a drawing or other visual representation of important information from the passage. 
3. Clarify: Identify and explain unfamiliar vocabulary words or other difficult-to-understand concepts. 
4. Question: Prepare several higher-level questions for the group to discuss.
5. Summarize: Explain the meaning of the text; give the big picture. 

When the group meets after reading the text, each member of the group shares his or her work in reviewing the text from the assigned perspective. Switch roles each time the students meet to discuss. With time, students will begin to incorporate these strategies automatically as they read. 

As I have often mentioned, when students struggle with a text, they need to learn to stop, troubleshoot, question, and summarize. A variation of the Reciprocal Teaching strategy asks paired students to read together a piece of challenging text that has been chosen and "chunked" into parts (a paragraph or a few paragraphs per chunk) by the teacher. One member of the pair is partner A; the other is B.  Partner A reads the first chunk aloud. Both students may mark the text for some teacher- or student-selected elements as they read. They may also add their own thoughts and questions in annotations. Partners A and B share their text markings and questions. Then, Partner B summarizes the chunk of text.  Partners switch roles and continue reading, annotating, discussing, and summarizing the next chunk. Proceed until pairs have finished reading the text.

Teenagers are social creatures. They enjoy sharing with one another, and they learn when they discuss information together. Often, a peer can explain something more effectively than an adult can because they speak the same "language" and--because they share a relatively equal level of expertise--can communicate their learning to one another in a way that makes sense. 

Consider ways you can add incorporate collaborative components into your classroom reading activities. You'll increase student engagement, and your students will practice skills that will help them when they someday have to go it alone. 

Thanks for reading my four-part series on Reading and WICOR.  I hope I've given you something to think about as you design experiences that enthrall, challenge, and support your students for reading success. 

  

How We Do It All Day Long

At the end of the second of five class periods, the guest speaker turned to me with a look of exhaustion and asked, "How do you do this all day long?"

By the end of sixth period, she was, as they say, "phoning it in." A glazed expression in her eyes, she continued to click through her PowerPoint slides and deliver the same art history lesson with the same inflections, the same pauses, and the same practiced information. My students sat there dutifully taking notes, some of them occasionally jolting back to semi-alertness after nodding off momentarily.

Early in the day the speaker told me she didn't have much experience with high schoolers, that she aspired to teach college students so that she could lecture and they could take notes.

Please note that I'm not trying to disparage this brave guest speaker who spent a long day sharing some valuable and interesting knowledge about the art of the Tang and Song Dynasties. Clearly, she knew her stuff and had prepared carefully for her day with my students.

But as I sat and watched her deliver the same lecture five times throughout the day, I had ample time to ponder her question: "How do you do this all day long?"

By the end of the day, the answer became clear. It's not about the content; it's about the students.

Though I like to fancy myself a pretty interesting public speaker who can deliver a 50-minute lecture with witty anecdotes, intriguing nuggets of trivia, abundant humor, and powerful visuals to accompany my ideas, the reality is that if I get too engrossed in my own knowledge-spewing, my students are passive and bored to tears.

The secret to surviving an entire day of teaching the same thing one period after another is to focus on the students. Involve them. Allow them to talk and question. Let them generate knowledge. Permit them to reflect and digest.

One of the many things I love about AVID is its instructional emphasis on WICOR: writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading. Even a "lecture day" provides opportunity for at least three of these: writing, inquiry, and collaboration.

The average person (and teenagers sometimes don't perform at average-person capacity) can only pay attention to a speaker for about ten minutes. Most of us drift off more quickly than that and begin making mental shopping lists, thinking about relatives who deserve a call, or dreaming about things beyond the parameters of the lecture hall or classroom.

The easy fix for this is to follow the 10-2-2 model. Lecture for a maximum of ten minutes; allow the students to write, revise, and reflect on their notes for two minutes; and ask the students to share their thoughts, questions, understandings, and reflections with a partner for two minutes. After that opportunity to interact on paper and with others, the students' brains are recharged and ready for another ten minutes of teacher talk.

An even better solution is to ask the students to do something creative with their learning--a quick presentation, a drawing, a bumper sticker slogan, a tiny poem, a monologue, a skit--and to share their products with the class. I assure you that what the students will have to say is a billion times more interesting and more memorable than anything you've got stored up in your well-practiced lecture.

The added bonus of allowing this type of interaction is that each class period is different. Though the content remains the same, the student input keeps it fresh for the teacher. The day is a lot less repetitive when you, the teacher, get to hear from the authentic voices of students.

So in answer to the guest speaker's question, "How do you do this all day long?", my response it that I do my best to focus on the students. I enjoy their unique personalities, laugh at their jokes, listen to their stories and personal connections, welcome their questions, clarify their confusion, and remember that they're the ones who are supposed to be getting something from the time they spend in my classroom.

That's how I've done it for 22 years, and I hope that's how I continue to do it until they wheel me out of my classroom someday in the distant future.