1. Lucy West Education Consultant
phone:
cell:

2. The Thinking Symposium March 2014 EOSDN
Lucy West

3. Overview Acknowledging What You Have Been Experimenting With
Considering Some of Your Questions
Diving Deeper into Classroom Discourse
Research
Examples from the Field

4. Developing Discourse People reported working on:
Think alouds whether students are right or wrong
Giving students opportunity to “show” us their thinking
Explicitly teaching active listening
Talk moves and proactive circles
Substituting timely feedback for praise
Staying with students through several exchanges
Avoiding speaking for children and asking them to rephrase for each other
Getting students to explain, agree/disagree, determine reasonableness

5. More examples People are working on:
Using Dot Talks and Number Talks in HS classes
Knowing what we want kids to know so we can highlight student work/thinking
Establishing norms for classroom talk
Naming criteria for good questions

6. Your Questions How do you get deep thinking from reluctant learners?
How do we invite all students—introverts/extroverts—into classroom discussion?
How do we know we (teachers/students) have moved forward?
How do we evaluate the thinking?
What role might pedagogical documentation play?
How to strengthen ESL student’s ability to actively communicate in the classroom?

7. Reviewing Where We Left Off
Discourse and Development of Thinking Go Hand In Hand
Three Basic Moves
Examining episodes from actual classes

8. Discourse and Thinking Evolve Together
Dialogue requires a climate where it is safe for learners (adults and students) to:
Come up with ideas (incomplete, way out)
Think out loud (articulate partial understanding, express confusion)
Explain their reasoning (misconceptions)
Explore their understanding (dive deeper)

9. 3 Basic Essential Talk Moves
Turn and Talk—has the potential to get 100% of the students engaged and willing to take a stand
Tell me more…OR Why do you think that?—puts the emphasis on finding out what others think and how they came to the conclusion they did. (Develops awareness, capacity to think about one’s thinking, reasoning, precision)
Who can repeat/paraphrase what was just said? (Establishes clear expectation to listen; hones capacity to reflect on ideas, construct viable arguments)
Talk moves on web site

10. Your Questions How do you get deep thinking from reluctant learners?
How do we invite all students—introverts/extroverts—into classroom discussion?
How to strengthen ESL student’s ability to actively communicate in the classroom?

11. Teachers improve their teaching when they:
Look at actual instances of teaching and learning and we calibrate our lenses to identify effective instruction
Identify, name and practice specific teaching moves that make student thinking visible
Collaboratively plan lessons informed by continual inquiry into student responses
Collectively explore how to engage students in ways that are relevant and inviting in today’s world

12. The Case of Jose
Jose is an ESL student, a former Sp. Ed. student, extremely reluctant learner
One Week Summer Program for Teachers
Day 4
Small Group Work—Groups of 4
Growing Squares: Build consecutive square numbers and find out what you can about how they grow. Create a poster and use models, tables, graphs, and language to express your ideas. Be prepared to share your findings with the whole class.

13. Set Clear Expectations
Everyone in your group needs to understand what is on the poster and be able to explain it.
Everyone in the the group needs to contribute to what is on your chart paper.
The chart must have examples of square numbers that are labeled, and table that shows the various dimensions and growth patterns of the square.
The must include full sentences that describe the patterns of growth that you noticed.

14. Reflecting on Jose Video
Remember Kaizen (taking very small steps toward a goal).
What were the small steps Lucy was attempting to take with Jose to encourage his participation and understanding?
Please find handout on right side of folder entitled:
Cultivating Classroom Discourse to Reveal Student Thinking
Please read the document and consider the video again through this lens.

15. Connecting Moves to Video
Communicates through stance/affect: I know you can do this and I will stick with you until you do. You matter.
Take a Non-Judgmental Stance
You are seeing a different pattern.
Re-voice, Ask Questions, and Scaffold
Where is your pattern on the chart?
Where is the 25, 64?

16. I Don’t Get It
Not yet.

17. Doubt Management
The major difference between less skilled and more productive learners is not their intelligence, but their willingness to endure disorientation, that feeling of being lost or confused.

18. Original Image Credit: Starting Line by Jon Marshall
Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on November 4, 2012
Quote from Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals
Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews & Kelly, 2007 pp
Slide by Bill Ferriter
The Tempered Radical

19. Shifting Mindsets-From Fixed to Growth
We believe in your potential and are committed to helping everyone get smarter.
We value taking on challenges, exerting effort, and surmounting obstacles more than we value “natural” talent and easy success.
Working hard to learn new things makes you smarter—it makes your brain grow new connections.
School is not a place that judges you. It is a place where people help your brain grow new connections.
Carol Dweck, Mindset and Equitable Education

20. Cat Food Problem
12 cans for $15
15 cans for $20

21. Towards Dialogic Teaching
Please read subsection only:
Seven Arguments for Talk
Communicative
Social
Culture
Neuroscientific
Psychological
Pedagogical
Political

22. What questions might people who think critically habitually ask?
How do you know that?
What is your source? What is the source of that source?
What evidence do you have? What further evidence do we need?
How might I be wrong about this?
What other perspectives might be valid here?
What are the possible pitfalls?
What haven’t we yet considered?

23. Basic Repertoire of Kinds of Teaching Talk
Rote
Recitation
Instruction/exposition
Discussion
Dialogue
Please read this section. Ask yourself, “What is the frequency of each of these kinds of talk in my classroom or the classrooms of teachers I supervise/coach?

24. Unpack and Take A Step
What is the difference between discussion and dialogue?
If you agree that more discussion and/or dialogue would be beneficial to students, what would you need to learn and believe to increase the amount of discussion and dialogue in your class(es)?
Consider the Essential Features of A Dialogic Classroom as you ponder the question.

25. Basic, Beginning, Turn and Talk
The Teaching Channel
HS History Class

26. Getting Students to Listen
Video-Paint the Porch

27. Class Video
It took 2/3 can of paint to paint 1/2 of the porch. How much paint will I need to paint the whole porch?
Fifth grade class
Heterogeneous group in Fl.
Lucy is the “visiting teacher”
Observing: teachers, coaches, administrators
Focus on increasing student understanding through talk

28. Paint Porch-Segment 1
Teacher: We’re thinking about the problem in similar ways. I’m going to have someone share their way of thinking about it. First I want you to think, “Do I understand what this person is saying? Do I get their thinking?” And if you don’t get her thinking you are going to ask her a question. And if you do get her thinking, I’m going to ask you to explain it or I might ask you to explain the other person’s thinking. So your job right now is to understand the picture that is on the board and the explanation that is going to come with it. Okay?

29. Paint the Porch—Segment 2
Chelsea: Well, I was thinking half of the porch is two thirds and…
Teacher: What’s two thirds? How could half be two thirds? [focus on meaning]
Chelsea: Because…..I forgot.
Teacher: What does this two thirds represent. What was the two thirds meaning? What is the meaning of the two thirds?
Chelsea: two thirds…

30. Combing Through The Transcript
Please use the transcript.
Compare it to the handout: Cultivating Classroom Discourse to Reveal Student Thinking
Work with a partner and identify the moves.

31. How do you get started? Clear, explicit, expectations
Naming the moves and practicing them
Slowing down the conversation
Valuing ideas--staying focused on one idea at a time
Unpacking confusion, mistakes, conjectures as a community--everyone helps
Staying with a student long enough to understand the student’s thinking
Coming back to students who are not fully engaging with an idea

32. Know Your Purpose
If your purpose is to increase student discourse, invent ways to do that.
Partner Talk
Face your Partner
Fishbowl/Video Examples
Analyze and make anchor charts
Small Group
Roles to play
Whole class:
Socratic circles
Inner and outer circles

33. Cultivating Classroom Discourse To Make Student Thinking Visible: Operating Principles
Please read over this document.
Notice the questions offered in the example column and characterize the kinds of questions listed there.

34. Effective Questions Depend on Purpose
Why is it that we continue to talk about open and closed questions, higher order thinking questions, and so forth and the research shows very few teachers are using these kinds of questions often or well?

35. Research Findings: Alexander
Open questions made up 10% of the questioning exchanges (in 500 classes across 5 countries)
15% of the sample did NOT ask ANY open questions
Probing the the teacher to encourage sustained and extended dialogue occurred in 11% of classes
Uptake questions occurred in only 4%
43% of teachers did not use any such moves
Pupils’ exchanges were very short—5 seconds on average
Pupil answers were limited to 3 words or less 70% of the time

36. Learning from Research
Questions are designed to encourage reasoning and speculation, not just elicit right answers
Oracy is regarded as no less important than literacy
Relationships between talking, reading and writing is clearly articulated
Sustained oral work in most lessons
Purpose of classroom talk is mainly cognitive—focused on developing thinking
Teachers model talk at its best
Talk between individual student and teacher is often sustained over a sequence of several exchanges

37. Regina’s Logo: Assume the pattern continues to grow in the same manner
Regina’s Logo: Assume the pattern continues to grow in the same manner. Find a rule or formula to determine the number of tiles in any size figure.
Size Size Size Size 4

38. Randall Charles

39. Randall Charles
BIG IDEA-- EQUIVALENCE: This word or phrase is a name for the Big Idea; it is not the idea itself. Rather the Big Ideas are statements like the following: “Any number, measure, numerical expression, algebraic expression, or equation can be represented in an infinite number of ways that have the same value.”
For ease of discussion I want to highlight some ideas that are in the article that will help you not only understand the article, but be able to articulate the idea.
Articulating a Big Idea as a statement forces one to come to grips with the essential mathematical meaning of that idea.

40. Homework from previous night
Regina’s Logo: find a closed form and recursive equation to determine the number of squares in a size 13 logo
Determine what size a logo would be that had 53 squares.

41. Upon Entering the Class
Work in Groups of 3 or 4
Discuss Last Night’s Homework:
Compare the closed and the recursive equations you created
Share how you came up with them
Why they make sense
Why you need them
Then work on Schemel’s logo—pages 3 & 4, #5-9

42. The Video: Early Work on Talk
The groups have completed their discussions
Two students are at the board-one acting as scribe and the other facilitator
Teacher is off to the side of the room
Two students have offered equations and one has offered a table which have been recorded on the board
We drop in when the teacher asks how the students arrived at the equations

43. The Class has already established that
this is a linear equation and shared a couple of
different yet equivalent equations which are on
the board.

44. Giselle’s Video
Write down what teacher is saying.

45. Day 2—Welcome Back!
Connections between Achievement Chart and Talk Moves
Naming the repertoire of moves made by the teachers in the videos in response to students
Assessment for learning (Informal)
In real time
Descriptive and Objective
Evaluation
Addressing the tension between assessing and evaluating
Acknowledging Paradox and Misalignment

46. Repertoire of Responses
Validation (You are seeing a different pattern.)
Scaffold (So where does this pattern show up on the chart?
Inclusion (Are you following what he/she said?)
Backtrack (Trace the thinking to develop self-awareness/self-monitoring.)
Redirect (Let’s go back to…)
Probe (Explain your idea.)
Encourage effort (Try again. You can do it.)

47. Repertoire of Responses
Invite discussion (Do you agree/disagree?)
Return to the Key Ideas (How is this logo growing?)
Ensuring Safety (You want to hear it again?)
Make Connections (How is your equation connected to his equation?)
Chunking (Wait. Who followed this so far?)
Careful Choice of Solutions/Perspectives to Discuss (Ambiguous, faulty, sophisticated)

48. Achievement Chart/Talk Moves
More talk time helps students process (think), dig deeper (inquiry), communicate their ideas and apply their growing understanding.

49. Is This Really an Either/Or?
How is it possible to both cover the curriculum AND have students engage in rich, robust dialogue frequently?
How might we need to think differently about the use of time in and focus of a lesson in terms of ‘covering the curriculum’ if we were to include substantial time for substantive discussion/dialogue in our classrooms to increase student understanding and application capacities?

50. A Both/And Perspective
Assessment can be enormously constructive in teaching and learning and also enormously destructive.
Pollard and Tann
…assessment debate awash with hidden assumptions, unstated views, partial truths, confusion, irrelevant emphasis and jargon.
Derek Rowntree

51. When and How Do We Assess
Assessment through conversation
Assessment through the use of video
Assessment through student work samples
Assessment through stop and jot moments
Assessment through exit tickets
Self, peer, teacher, coach, authentic audience assessment
Before, during, at the end and after, through reflection

52. Stance of Assessor
Visible listening—notes, slides, videos to understand student’s path’s, processes, thinking
Pedagogy of listening throughout a lesson (e.g. classroom discourse, stop and jot, inviting questions)
Inquisitive and responsive—tell me more, show us what you mean, give an example, draw, write, describe, explain, help me understand, convince me

53. Assessment for Learning
Assessment can help all students to be more motivated if teachers:
Emphasize real progress and achievement rather than failure
Emphasize effort rather than ability
Emphasize progress against previous personal best
Avoid or play down comparison with others
Raise their awareness regarding the impact comments and grades can have on confidence and self-esteem

54. Assessment for Learning
Assessment can help all students learn if teachers:
Are clear with learners about what they are being asked to learn and how they will know they have been successful
Help them become more aware of how, as well as what, they’re learning
Help them to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses
Give them guidance/feedback on how to improve and opportunities to do so

55. “The most powerful single influence enhancing achievement is feedback”
Quality feedback is needed, not more feedback
Much of the feedback provided by the teacher to the student is not valued and not acted on
Students with a Growth Mindset welcome feedback and are more likely to use it to improve their performance
Oral feedback is much more effective than written
The most powerful feedback is provided from the student to the teacher

56. Revisiting the Turkey Problem
It takes 15 minutes per pound to cook a 24 lb. turkey. How long does it take to cook the turkey?
Third grade class.
Clip 1 from last session: 360 minutes = 6 hours, count jumps of 15 minutes, circle every 4 jumps and get 6 hours
Clip 2: A shortcut: count 12 jumps of 30 (halving and doubling strategy)
Are the students having a discussion or a a dialogue or are there elements of both?

57. Work with a Partner Write down verbatim what different students say.
You will use these notes to assess the students in the class.

58. What is the evidence?
What did each of the students who spoke understand?
What confusions surfaced? Did any student work through any aspect of the confusion? What is your evidence?
Based on what you observed, what might be your response in terms of instructional moves in subsequent lessons?
Is it okay for students to leave the discussion not fully understanding this new strategy? Why or why not?

59. Now What Learning is messy.
Different students understand different aspects of topics under discussion.
How might continued dialogue begin to build coherence across the varied types of understanding in the whole group?
What strategies can a teacher use once these differences emerge to ensure that the varying levels of understanding are being addressed?

60. From Assessing to Evaluating
Assess everyday in every moment
Find some way to document what you are noticing
Find some way for students to document what they are learning about their learning, progress, and next steps

61. How effective are the following examples of commonly offered feedback?
Good Job or Excellent, or Well Done
Smiley Face
Think!
Read the Problem!
Careless Error—Do Over
72% or 90% or 83%
Grade: A, B, C, D, F

62. What is effective feedback?
Feedback that results in the recipient’s desire and capacity to take further action that improves the product or skill the learner is developing.
Who can provide effective feedback to students?
Who can provide effective feedback to teachers?

63. Written Feedback Clear Focused on one important action or idea
Usually in question form
Requires action and resubmission
The final product is the only product that matters—not partial credit—reaching standard or above should require effort and effort is more important than speed, or “already knowing”

64. You and Your Colleagues Offer A New Policy that Addresses the Following:
To what extent should:
students be compared to (a) a standard and (b) to each other
grades reflect (a) a students performance at the end of the learning period or (b) a student’s progress during the learning period
grades reflect academic enablers e.g. effort, attendance, completion of assignments, participation
grades reflect the specific depth of knowledge ( e.g. discrete facts; concepts; problem solving)

65. Beginning with the End in Mind
The percent of a student’s final grade devoted to each of the 4 dilemmas
in the current policy
in the proposed policy
The rationale for the change
The expected impact on student performance – which students will benefit from the change and which will not
The expected responses from various stakeholders and how to address those responses

66. Before you start, negotiate:
How many people on a team at your table
How many teams at your table
How the teams will ensure that every voice is heard
How each team will ensure that every team member is listening to the ideas of others
How team members will manage time and record ideas
Each team will be given 15 minutes to start.

67. Table Group
At the end of 15 minutes the table group will reconvene to hear from each team
The table group will synthesize the ideas of the sub-teams
Each table group posts on go-to meeting the ideas/suggestions/questions at play at their table