100 Posts in 100 Days
If you are following my 100 Posts in 100 Days, you are in the throes of this “mini-series” about the impact of my participation at the PEBC Thinking Strategies Institute in the early 2000s. Two decades later and I still think about and feel the effects almost daily.
Yesterday’s vignettes touched on my shifting mindset of how I saw the roles of “teacher” and “learner” in my classroom and how I organized classroom space to help support independence. Today’s vignettes highlight routines & rituals and curriculum connections.
Jingle Bell Rock … in June
“It’s significant to realize that the most creative environments in our society are not the ever-changing
ones. The artist’s studio, the researcher’s laboratory, the scholar’s library are each kept deliberately simple so as to support the complexities of the work in progress. They are deliberately kept predictable so the unpredictable can happen.”
~Lucy Calkins, The Art of Teaching Writing
This quote was posted in my classroom circa 2002. Certainly it applies to the design of the physical space that I wrote about in yesterday’s post. Experts on productivity would likely agree. Automate or replicate as many “small decisions”, like what to wear or what to pack for lunch, so that your time and energy is spent on “big decisions” and creative acts.
A predictable structure with flexible, responsive activities is workshop teaching at it’s finest. My students came to know that we would meet several times a day for a few moments of explicit instruction followed by ample time to work independently or in small groups and conclude with reflection and synthesis of our learning. Each child wrote weekly goals, helping to maintain focus, follow progress, and develop ownership of their own learning. Day in and day out. In reading, writing, math, science, and social studies.
Before the workshops even began, though, we needed to start our day well. Our opening ritual was one of the best parts of our day. Twenty six small bodies all gathered together, checking in and ready to connect through language and art. I would make eye contact with each child and greet him or her by name and they would return in kind. We literally heard every single voice to start our day.
Then, the fun ~ and learning! ~ began in earnest. Monday was the big reveal of the newest addition to our growing anthology of poems and music. From Chicken Soup with Rice (Maurice Sendak) to Baby Beluga (Raffi) to What a Wonderful World (Louis Armstrong), we eagerly added the work to our binders and updated our table of contents. Tuesday-Thursday, we practiced our fluency, discovered high frequency words and new spelling patterns, developed new vocabulary, learned about grammar and poetic devices. Each day was a new discovery. Until Friday. Friday was reserved for our favorites. Students would nominate previous entries and we would chant or sing to our hearts content. And so it was that our predictable routine with room for creativity and flexibility led to a “bring down the house” rendition of Jingle Bell Rock that drew curious parents to our classroom on the final day of school in June! 🔔
Predictions, Estimations, and Hypotheses
The Thinking Strategies Institute is called The Thinking Strategies Institute for a reason. The workshop approach played a prominent role as is well established in what I’ve been writing. To be effective, though, any approach must be coupled with a quality curriculum. At the institute learned not just how to organize our instructional time but also ways to organize our curriculum and lessons around, well, thinking strategies. Strategies transferable across disciplines and life experiences and accessible by learners of all ages. Strategies such as developing schema, monitoring for meaning, asking questions, using sensory images, inferring, determining importance, and synthesizing.
Ellin Oliver Keene had recently published Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Reader’s Workshop, where she illuminated ways these strategies contributed to readers’ understanding of their reading. The students I observed in Debbie Miller’s classroom were learning to ask sophisticated questions as they listened to their shared text and read their own books. Like scientists, they were observing their natural world and writing their wonderings in preparation for work on informational writing. In the afternoon, they joined their mathematics teacher and practiced how mathematicians identify and use questions to solve problems. Powerful, real world work, in the context of being six years old, all centered on the different ways questions help us understand and build knowledge.
Returning home, my colleague and I began intently incorporating the thinking strategies into our language and lesson design. Despite our desire, we didn’t have the luxury of single-handedly revamping our entire school district’s curriculum or ignoring our scope and sequence of instruction. But, we were able to examine our curriculum and identify where these thinking strategies lived and make connections all day long. We could name these strategies for our young students, giving them academic language that drew them further into a special community of learners and teachers.
For example, as we learned about sensory and emotional images, we noticed the ways some picture books had a story told in words and a story told in illustrations (think of author Jan Brett). A reader can only create an image in their mind if a writer has carefully selected their words. In math, we learned how drawing pictures could help us solve problems. And in art, we were able to play with all kinds of drawing and painting techniques. It’s 20 years later and my colleagues and I are regularly thinking about how to design our curriculum and lessons to support students’ transfer of learning.
I dare say that when I look back, elevating the role of the thinking strategies such as sensory and emotional images with our students also elevated their ability to transfer ideas across settings and into their lives. If I ever doubt that, I recall the day that one of my students, a 2nd grader at the time, emphatically asked me to explain what was happening in our classroom:
“Ms. Beckley! In reading, you teach us to make predictions. In math, you ask us to estimate. And in science, we are supposed to make a hypothesis. Aren’t they all the same????”
From the mouths of babes.