Student Talk

The post below is copied from a newsletter I receive and frequently forward to the II Conference on First Class. The originial author, Don Mesibov is a pre-service education teacher in New York State.


"Recently, a student wrote in his journal: "I have always been nervous about speaking in front of anyone, even my fellow students in school. This class was different. We were so relaxed and everyone spoke so often that by the end of the semester I was a lot less fearful about speaking and often spoke in front of 24 students and the teacher without giving it a thought."

As you can expect, I was thrilled to read this because I make a conscious effort to nurture a classroom environment that encourages every student to speak, speak often and speak intelligently.

Here are some of my strategies:

1. Every student speaks in front of the class as least once each class, often as many as five or six times. Students speak during a five minute opening activity which accesses prior knowledge, grabs attention and motivates students to want to learn what we are about to study. There is also a closure activity that gives me a chance to learn a little more about what has "stuck" with the students during the lesson. At least one of these activities, often both, requires an individual response from each student with the instruction that the response be confined to ten seconds or less. Occasionally I will pose the question to students in groups of three or four and ask for a reporter to share a 30 second response after allowing a few minutes for group discussion.

2. Rarely do I put a student on the spot to answer, in front of the entire class, a question that has a right or wrong answer. Much more often I will ask for perceptions or I will request opinions with sound rationale. For instance, I would not ask a student to name the 17th president of the United States. I am more likely to ask why students think politicians sometimes take bribes, or I might ask them to look at a list of the Bill of Rights and tell me which they think is the most important and, in 10 seconds, why.

I have to weigh the importance of whatever objective I might have by putting a student on the spot for an answer he might discover is wrong against the priority I want to give toward creating a non-threatening environment that encourages discussion. (I might throw a "right or wrong" question out to the entire class and let volunteers offer responses.)

3. Often I will pose a question that can be answered with a brief response and ask students to write down their answers before I request verbal sharing. People are more comfortable sharing something they have thought about and written down than something to which they have to respond, in front of everyone, spontaneously.

4. If students engage in several activities with the same group I may insist that they rotate reporters so that different students speak for the group each time. This has the same effect as having students write their responses first. When the group agrees on a response, the reporter doesn’t feel the same pressure as when he has to create his own response and risk being wrong in front of the larger audience.
5. Students dialogue in pairs or small groups (never larger than four to a group) anywhere from a quarter of the time spent during a class period to the entire class. I believe that creating situations where students are speaking in small groups contributes to their comfort level when asked to address the entire class.

6. I have frequent small group presentations to the rest of the class. At these times, no student in the group has a lot of presenting to do, but each student does some and this seems to be much easier for them than to be assigned to solo in front of the class.

In one class last week, every student spoke at least three times, even if it was just to give a ten second response to a question. Students worked in small groups much of the time and many students spoke in front of the entire class at least another two or three times as groups reported progress, results, and responses.

When I matriculated from kindergarten to 12th grade and then through college, students rarely spoke in front of the entire class. If we did, it was often when we were embarrassed by a teacher trying to see if we knew an answer or it was the once or twice a year we had to do a solo presentation with our grade riding on it. In other words, most of the time that I was called upon to speak publicly, in school, it was a pressurized situation (for me, at least). No wonder the biggest fear of many people of my generation is public speaking."

Interesting reflections. Thanks, Don.

ENGAGING Survey

Our faculty study group selected Paul Vermette's book, "Engaging Teens in Their Own Learning: 8 Keys to Success," as our primary resource for professional development. I created the survey below to help teachers determine where there stand with regard to the ENGAGING model. Feel free to give it a try.

If you are interested in obtaining copies of the book, it is available from http://www.eyeoneducation.com/; Dr. Vermette is very accessible via email, and would really appreciate feedback about the book.

ENGAGING click the word to go to the survey...the password is "engaging"

DON'T WORRY IF YOU GET A WARNING ABOUT THE SITE'S SECURITY CERTIFICATE...IT'S LEGIT!

Cheers.

Stepping Out PD

Today I had the chance to attend the Stepping Out PD session that was run by Karen Greenham on behalf of Student Pathways for Success. Karen did a great job facilitating despite not having the course books at her disposal. The session introduced me to some really interesting ideas as far as preparing kids for reading and viewing activities. It also reminded me of things that I knew previously, but have not used in some time. The main strategies that I plan to implement in the near future, if not tomorrow are:

-Question generation (where the students, not the teacher, generate the questions)
-anticipate guides
-foldables
-word wall
-"they say, I say"

One of the things I liked best about the session was that Karen gave us a chance to actually experience the strategies instead of just telling us about them. We were also given ample talk time to think of how we could apply any given strategy to our own classes. I was sad to hear, though, that Marie Chambers is retiring in January. She will definitely be missed!

I will create some postings to describe my use of the above strategies in the near future.

Working the Room Revisited

On numerous occasions, I have referred to the work of Paul Vermette, Don Mesibov, Pat Flynn and Mike Smith from NY State. They have published several books about the importance and benefits of constructivist, student-centred learning. In addition to giving students the chance to construct their own meaning about a topic (which they will do anyway), teachers are free to work the room to intervene in a spontaneous fashion with students. A spontaneous intervention is one that the teacher has not planned, but that is extremely valuable for students. Instead of sitting a his or her desk, the teacher wanders around and observes groups or individuals working. He or she can pose questions, read student answers and offer suggestions, apply low-level "bumps" (see Bennett and Smilanich), etc. Once we retire to the desk, students are less likely to be productive; their level of concern drops. They are masters at looking busy...we have all had the student who looks as though he or she is making notes or reading and when we pass by, they quickly flip their page to conceal a note to a friend or the doodle of the day/hour/minute. The more we work the room, the less chance a student has to get off task.

Here are two examples from one class today:

Grade 10 history students were completing a very "Where's Waldo" type of question and answer sheet that dealt with the Canada's position at the end of WWI. I made sure to actually read each student's work as they worked to make sure they were on the right track and that they answered all parts of a question (some questions asked for a whopping two pieces of info!). Quite often I will walk by and casually observe students and intervene if they are off task or if they have a question. Today, I was able to help 3 students with one question alone, just by passing by and scanning their work. After seeing their difficulty with the question, I made sure that I checked everyone's and sure enough, others had the same error, missing info. Spontaneous intervention-productive result.

When working the room, the teacher also has a chance to interact with students who are less likely to raise their hand and answer in front of the class, or ask a question in front of the class. Today as I passed by a student, she quietly asked "Why was more independence important for Canada? How would that make us stronger?" I sat down and gave her an analogy that I had used before in a similar situation. I asked her what many teens desire from their parents when they are at or around her age, and she answered "responsibility." I was able to draw parallels between a teenager's quest for independence and Canada's quest for the same thing, which really helped to clear things up for her.

The point that Vermette et al. continually make is that humans (and especially teens) quickly discard information that they view as meaningless or unnecessary. Even if we have explained it to the class, it doesn't always sink in at the time. On numerous occasions I had touched on the importance of our new independence, but until that time today, this student did not see it as necessary info. I believe she was very genuine when I asked if she better understood things after our chat and she replied "Yeah, a lot."

Working the room leads to better student understanding and fewer management headaches for teachers.

Involving more students...really simple stuff

There are a number of things that we can do to improve the chances that kids are engaged in our classes. The ones I will describe here involve no preparation on your part, and no extra resources.

The q and a session that I referred to in another post is a teacher favourite--let's see what they think/remember about content x. As I said, you will have the regulars whose hands go up on a consistent basis while the others (who might actually know the answer too!) let them take the spotlight. Very little thinking is done by those who are not called upon by the teacher.

Solution: Paired Discussion (lots of other names too!)

Determine how you want the pairs set up. I have had tremendous success with the "appointment schedule" method; I do not advocate for letting students pick their own team members on a regular basis. Don't just tell them to talk it over. Instead, have them number off. Give them a method to determine numbers. I like to use the birthdays, because then they can engage in a conversation with each other that involves something they should know about for sure! Example: "Whichever partner is older is person 1, the baby of the group is person 2." Even this kind of easy conversation puts a smile on many students' faces, and they can function more effectively in groups as a result (teambuilding). Now ask them the question and give them some think time. I suggest having them write their ideas down for more accountability. Once their think time is done, tell them that before you have them share their ideas with the class, they will have a chance to rehearse or to see what someone else wrote. Tell them which person in the pair (1 or 2) will speak first, then let them talk. Once that is done, you have every right to call on anyone in the class. I tell them I don't want to see hands in advance, so their "level of concern" (Is he going to pick me?) stays high. Of course kids can get off topic in their discussions, but you have done alot to make sure that they are thinking and engaged. When I choose a student, I will say something like: "Sarah, what did you and Don come up with?" Early in the semester, I tell students that I ask questions that way for a reason: Sarah can blame Don if it's not a great answer, or she can take all the glory if it's a great answer. Then I start choosing students randomly.

Consider how much information we expect students to remember/learn. We need to give them time to process. When creating your lesson plans, build in time for student talk (think pair share, round robin, etc). We are so content driven, but what good is that when we're the only ones who know the content at the end of the day. Plan to "cover" less, but have them talk/write/draw about it more. Of course, you need to become adept at working the room for all this to work. As they talk, you walk and listen...this provides ample opportunities to intervene and explain something or clarify a concept. You can also guage students' understanding without putting anyone on the spot.

Follow-up to Sunday's Post

Okay, part 2. So many of the tactics and strategies that we come across are ones that are either unappealing, or they just don't seem applicable to our classes. Many teachers feel comfortable teaching as they were taught--some variation of the Socratic dialogue in which they attempt to "extract" information from the learner. Lately there has been the misconception that lecture/Socratic-type lessons are improper ways to teach. My response to that is that each can be a valuable part of the student's classroom experience, as long as we somehow involve them in that experience. Many books describe a lecture as an attempt by the teacher to pour knowledge from his or her head into the learners' heads--I said it, and therefore they are learning it. The reality is that very few people out there, adults included, can learn effectively this way, especially when there is no context for the learning. We quickly discard information that we feel is unimportant and irrelevant; therefore, if a lecture is given, make it part of a larger task that students are working on. The lecture should be framed in such a way that they see the information presented as valuable and usable. That's just one way to make lecture/Socratic dialogue more effective. I'll elaborate on my second suggestion in a day or so.

Keeping it simple...asking questions effectively

After flipping through a book like Beyond Monet or Models of Teaching, teachers might feel pretty overwhelmed. There are so many things that can be done for students that will increase their chances of learning any given content. It sounds cliche, but yes, we need to engage them as much as possible. One of the most common parts of any class is the q and a session that inevitably develops. The usual recipe is very close to the scene from Ferris Buehler's Day Off in which the teacher poses a question, and then upon seeing no hands, follows up with "Anyone? Anyone?" He concludes by answering the question himself. In our classes, there are sometimes no hands, but usually there are between 2 and 4 "regulars" who seem keen to give any question a try. The other students sit patiently and wait with their hands down, rarely making eye contact, because they are sure that the regulars will attempt the question. The teacher looks around and sees the regulars as saviours of his or her Socratic "discussion." These kids get the answer or not, and the teacher is given the opportunity to correct or praise that student while the others have the opportunity to sit with their brains off and resting. There are countless things we, as teachers, can do to avoid this common pitfall. If even a handful of these are done, our classes become more effective, and that's without integrating complex things like Mind Maps, concept maps, other graphic organizers, Creative Controversy and performance tasks.

Okay, it's Sunday night and I like to pretend I have a life. This post is an intro to a much more involved post that will follow later this week. The blog is back. Stay tuned.

A lesson from today (success!)

My locally developed history class has had some difficulty with the course content so far. Today, I decided to challenge them to raise the bar as far as what they accomplish in class and how hard they work. They were very successful with this lesson; here is how it went:

1. Students wrote the word "ROARING" vertically in their notes and tried to associate each letter with a term or phrase that related to some aspect of the Roaring Twenties. I wrote their ideas on the Smartboard. This was an excellent way to access prior knowledge (I use it quite a bit in all courses).

2. We reviewed the fact that the Twenties are called roaring because they were "exciting, fast-paced, and loud" for many Canadians. I told them that we were going to see if all groups in this country would describe the twenties as roaring based on their experiences. We were going to focus on immigrants and Aboriginal people.

3. We used an anticipation guide last week, so I thought it would be good to use one again. The kids remembered how they work, so I didn't have to do much up-front instruction.

4. Next, I put the students into pairs. Each person was responsible for filling in a 5ws+H chart for his or her topic, then they would teach the information to their partner. After the research was done, I had the students move their desks so they were face to face. I also told them that they had to refer to their peer teacher as "Mr." or "Miss" just to keep things authentic. This added some fun to the process. As the students taught each other I circulated and intervened when necessary. I was able to have several quick but meaningful conversations with students as they interacted with each other.

This class went by so quickly, and I was very impressed by how they stayed on task. Their level of concern went up immediately when they knew that they would be partly responsible for their partner's learning. We didn't quite finish the entire lesson, but we are in a great position to start tomorrow's class.

We will return to the anticipation guide and then I will probably have them write a response to the prompt: Did the twenties roar for everyone?