Developing the Ability to Talk in Today's World

"Clearly, the path toward creating a future filled with opportunity and choice for our children is paved with the ability to think and talk with others in purposeful ways as a means of generating ideas and constructing understanding."  This quote from this weeks chapter in Comprehension Through Conversation, got us reflecting on the work we did in this week's professional development session.  In that session, we were placed in large groups made up of teachers we were unfamiliar with.  Our discussion revealed struggles to make the time purposeful and walk away with new understanding due to the fact that we were unfamiliar with the members of our group and uncomfortable in the environments we were placed in.  We were not all able to get past the discomfort to get to collective action.  We did not negotiate or construct meaning as a group and ended up feeling frustrated and fractured.  As we shared this, we realized the setting we were currently in was one of comfort and safety, thus talk flowed freely and guards were down.  Listening, acknowledging and disagreeing came naturally because of the familiarity. This understanding led us to think about how we group kids to have conversations and how sometimes we naturally discourage friends who talk from being in groups.  We often place kids in groups with others they are unfamiliar with, have never worked with and therefore not as comfortable with.  The willingness to share and receive messages is inhibited.  Don't get me wrong, we're not going to go and group kids by social groups, but it did cause us to think more purposefully and flexibly about who we put together in order to create the deepest conversations.  Choice about topic and group can give kids a level of support that allows the sharing of ideas and receipt of messages to be encouraged. We might even be charged to think about purposeful grouping as a scaffold for instruction. After all, "Children do not need, nor can they afford, to wait until high school or beyond to learn to use talk in purposeful ways."  After our experience on Monday, this could not be  more clear!

Listening to Learn and Learning to Listen

The 6th Grade language arts team chose to read Comprehension Through Conversation by Maria Nicholas in order to strengthen our knowledge of engaging students in literature discussions.  Since receiving our books mere minutes before our first meeting, we chose to spend the first meeting reading the introduction and foreword, with low expectations.  Well, we're happy to say our expectations were exceeded.  We had no idea three little pages would pack so much power.  Soon after reading, one of the author's questions thrust us into conversation and thought.  "How much time do we spend helping children to understand the power that comes from listening to the thoughts of others, and together building a greater understanding  than we were able to attain individually?"  Not enough, was our response.
We all know and have classrooms filled with students waiting with hands up in anticipation of sharing answers or thoughts. The teacher then listens, confirms or scaffolds, then moves on in an effort to check for understanding from many students. We quickly realized that as we work to implement the workshop model in the middle school, the share time scheduled at the end of the workshop frequently gets cut. It became clear that we were stripping our students of this opportunity to listen to the meaning constructed from text by readers in our classrooms and learn from one another. When students take time to construct meaning from text and consolidate new learning, it's vital they have the opportunity to share, compare and connect that meaning with others. Another idea that resonated with us was that the depth of thinking and student response to the thinking was far more important than the number of students sharing out. This has sparked a call to action to honor that share time and use it a bit differently than we have been. Based on all of the thought, discussion and action from the introduction and foreword, we are encouraged about what lies ahead in the meat of this text. And we will use our discussion time to listen as we share our understanding, questions, confusions, and learn from one another about how to bring this to life in our classrooms.