*This picture is from our field trip from hell. But they're so cute. We have another field trip next week... I am already having nightmares.
**Author note: Kids are not stupid. Ever. But I didn't want to misquote my source, who uses the word as any teenage girl would, and it should be taken in that context. Carry on.
I've been thinking a lot about "Classroom Discourse" - helping chatty kids channel their chatting into productive talk and helping quiet kids speak up so their reasoning is heard and appreciated. My fourth graders desperately need to talk, they have so much to say to each other, and I WANT them to be able to talk, I just want it to be productive. Doing worksheets alone in silence is boring. And I don't want it to be all me talking - that's boring too. (Just ask Ra)
In the words of my very smart little 9th grade sister, Meg... "At school we always talk to each other about things we don't understand because sometimes my classmates have better answers and reasons than the teacher"
So true.
I want to create a classroom where there's a lot of talk. I think that this is becoming my focusing question for the year. I want my classroom to be a place where kids are respectful of each other's thinking, where they explain their own reasoning and listen to the reasoning of their classmates, where they question each other and themselves, where they teach each other.
Here are some of my issues with this. I don't want to always pair the high-performing kids with the low-performing kids. And I don't want to always put the low-performing kids together and the high-performing kids together. I also don't want one kid to always be giving other kids the answers. Meg says, "if you divide them into groups with similar academic capabilities then stupid kids wouldn't mooch of the smarty pants. I hated when kids mooched off my answers!"
Sigh. How do I keep the "smarty pants" from being mooched off of? Or even worse, giving their answers to the slower kids without explaining why or how they got them. But then we get back to the problem with making homogeneous leveled learning groups that scar the poor "stupid" kids for life. They're NOT stupid, but they will think they're stupid if they're continually put in the "stupid" group.
I want them ALL to understand it, and I need to create a culture where they teach each other. Meg recommends that "the smart and stupid kids combined groups could be good for completing and collaborating on classwork and homework or reviewing for a test" Good call Meg, if I keep changing up the groups maybe I can keep everyone involved and learning.
Also, I feel like we don't have a very strong sense of community in my classroom right now - no morning meeting, or even weekly meeting, and even though we have a small group (only 21 kids), I wish that they had a little more space to express themselves and appreciate each other. I think that a strong sense of respect for each other is necessary to make this whole "classroom discourse" thing work.
1 comment:
Hi Miss G-
You're right about groups being a tricky thing to balance, between a social opportunity, and learning opportunity, and a potentially negative, destructive opportunity. But we do groups not only for the social interaction piece, but because it provides an excellent opportunity to teach the students how to function in a group that is not just their friends, and it teaches them to talk about real things going on in the world outside of themselves. I had some profound realizations about grouping last year. My school was VERY big on heterogeneous grouping and I found that I wasn't getting the results I wanted... it was just what you described... the higher functioning kids would rule the group, or at least be allowed to rule the group by the quieter, less interested, or a bit behind students. I decided I would group them by interest and level- and WOW- I had some amazing results. A group of girls, who in the mixed groups would have been quiet, were all communicating and coming up with great ideas to solve the problem. Because they were comfortable with each other, and didn't feel intellectually threatened by the more outspoken students, they were able to think outwardly for themselves (I say outwardly because I do believe that they are thinking inwardly- and just not sharing). A key piece in this situation was getting the groups to share with the class what they had been talking about once they were finished. This empowered the girls who were generally left out and showed the students who typically ruled the groups that those students did have ideas- great ones at that, and if they were allowed the time and space to share them, they could be productive and positive group members that didn't "need" to be given the answers. So, moral of my story is... there's not one way. Different activities call for different situations, and the most important opportunity for learning isn't necessarily the topic of discussion, but the social interaction that is happening during the discussion, and it must be acknowledged and talked about afterward! Hope you're having a great weekend.
Anne
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