1. Helping Students Examine Their Reasoning
Element 18
Helping Students Examine Their Reasoning

2. Examining Reasoning Helping students produce and defend claims
Claims that come from their own reasoning
Examining claims that are produced by other authors

3. Why This Element
Many of our standards demand that we incorporate this line of thinking into our learning experiences.
It’s a life skill that even we as adults can struggle with.
We need to improve our skill set to assist our students in developing this skill.

4. Teacher Behaviors for Effective Implementation
Identify the critical content to be examined
Directly model (think aloud), teach and facilitate the process for the students
Provide ongoing opportunities for students to examine their line of reasoning and that of others
Provide ongoing opportunities for students to support and defend claims in relation to evidence

5. Interconnectedness of the Elements
Identify Critical Content
Chunk it out
Preview the content
Allow time for students to process, elaborate, record and reflect on the content
Skillfully blend these elements together to achieve the goal of students deepening their learning in the content

6. Time, Time, Time This cannot be rushed
It takes time for students to wrestle with the information and think deeply about it.
Analyzing a line of thinking is a difficult, time intensive task.
In advance, think about the probing questions you can ask students to prompt their thinking.
Don’t rescue them because it’s taking too long in your mind. This productive struggle is where the learning takes place.

7. Monitor for Desired Effect
Students can:
Describe errors in information
Evaluate the efficiency of a process
Explain the overall structure of the argument
Identify and take various perspectives
Identify support for perspectives with support
Demonstrate this through the artifacts/work product

8. Monitor and Reflect
The difference between a good teacher and a great teacher is the relentless inspection of student work.
-Rick DuFour
The more teachers monitor their students and reflect on how they are progressing in the learning process, the better equipped they will be to adjust their instruction to meet student needs.

9. We tend to monitor for compliance and engagement.
This should be our focus…
We tend to monitor for compliance and engagement; we want to monitor for learning and track progress minute to minute

10. What are the critical parts of this definition?
Teacher act
Checking evidence
Desired student learning of critical content
During instruction

11. Facilitation Grid for Monitoring
Use some sort of collection tool as you monitor student progress toward the understanding of critical content.
A facilitation grid is one method.
Write the student names down the left side.
Write the learning targets or criteria you are looking for as you monitor student learning across the top.
In this case it is what ever you expect to see the students writing, doing or saying as you walk around.
As you walk around and monitor student work, check off who has it and who does not.
Take your learning targets or criteria for success and put them on the facilitation grid.

12. This is where we want to live.
This is where we tend to spend most of our time currently.
If we monitor during learning, we can catch misconceptions at the earliest possible moment, make corrections and send students on their way to the next piece of learning.

13. There are different types of formative assessments
There are different types of formative assessments. Depending on when you use them, they can be data we collect to monitor learning that is taking place in the moment.

14. This is the difference between a good teacher and a great teacher.

15. Monitoring During Instruction
Teacher Observation:
Walk and listen to student conversations around critical content
Watch and listen to demonstrations, oral presentations, etc. of critical content
Spot check student work to determine progress
Ask probing questions to redirect or elevate thinking
Review student class work
Observe students as they work with manipulatives
Observe students as they respond by pointing to correct answers or represent the correct answer through body movement

16. Scaffold/Support-Adaptations
Use pictures, graphics, and diagrams
Provide sentence stems
Develop guiding/probing questions
Tell stories to illustrate examples
Regroup students to provide additional support
Show work samples or point out exemplars
Review reasoning behind responses before asking students to respond
Provide a brief overview of critical content
Post anchor charts, helpful lists, diagrams or techniques

17. Extension Adaptations
Students answer questions that stretch them just beyond the standard to deepen and extend their thinking.
Students categorize important terms and make generalizations based on those categories.
Students identify how each chunk of information or each activity relates to the learning targets.
Students identify similarities and differences between learning targets, and groups’ conclusions or solution methods.
Students create their own graphic organizer to share with the class.
Students identify strategies and techniques that were particularly useful to their knowledge gain.
Students create picture, graphics, and diagrams of previously learned skills or procedures to share with the class.

18. Connecting PLC Work - Monitoring
You are the content experts, so use each other’s experience and knowledge during your PLC time to:
Prioritize and problem solve around the most critical content students must learn.
Determine what mastery of the target/standard(s) looks like.
Analyze data in order to share successful strategies and meet the needs of all students.
Brainstorm scaffold/supports could be used to support student learning.
brainstorm extensions that could be used in the learning moment to extend student learning.

19. Scaffold to Meet Needs
Change the level of the text with the same content
Break down the content into several smaller chunks
Give students organizers or think sheets to clarify and guide their thinking, one task/step at a time

20. Instructional Strategies
Using logic to examine a response
Examine errors and the accuracy of a response
Examining the efficiencies of multiple methods of problem solving
Producing and defending claims related to content
Identify and analyze claims of an author’s work
Judging reasoning and evidence in an author’s work

21. Examine Logic in Reasoning
Logic is a step by step progression in thinking based on some sort of evidence.
Most basic questions:
Does this answer make sense?
Is my conclusion logical?
What kind of evidence do I have to support this statement?

22. Cautions
Complexity of example is appropriate for grade/cognitive level
Provide enough time to work through the process
Let students analyze and think with prompting and support from you
Students should use evidence to support their answers

23. Let’s take a peek..
Read over the example and non-example. (Download it from the module)
What does the teacher intentionally do in the example to support students during this learning experience?
What didn’t the teacher do in the non-example?

24. Are you looking for some more ideas?
Look on the Framework Canvas Course (Course # ) for additional information to support your learning.