Teaching time

Some time ago, maybe last week, I saved an article onto my iPad from the Christensen Institute about why teachers should free up their time.  As I'm in the UK this week looking after my mum, I have finally found the time away from school to read it.  Here are my thoughts.

The article basically asks what is the best use to a teacher's time.  The conclusion is that is it not best spent on delivering instruction, but on giving individual and small group feedback - and the way to enable this is to help students become more self-directed and responsible for their own learning.

In this article there was a link to another one, also by Heather Staker, entitled How to create higher performing, happier classrooms in 7 moves:  A playbook for teachers.  This study looked at what teachers can learn from organisations such as Google about happiness and performance.  Again the findings were that the best managers empower their teams and do not micromanage - and the question was whether or not the same principles could be applied to classrooms (and also whether this approach would then prepare students better for future workplaces).  Here are the 7 moves identified by the study:

1. Teach mindsets - especially agency, creativity, growth mindset and a passion for learning.
2. Release control - provide resources that students can access without direct instruction.
3. Encourage teaming - peer-to-peer learning and team-based collaboration.
4. Give feedback - give personal, frequent and actionable feedback in small groups and one-on-ones.
5. Build relationships of truth - be concerned with the students as individuals and trust their ability to drive their own learning.
6. Help students hold themselves accountable - for example to set goals and track their progress.
7. Hold yourself accountable - track yourself through reflection, surveys, peers and self-assessment.

Even more interesting to me, the research shows that teachers can use technology for freeing up their time so that they have have more interaction with their students.  All these 7 moves are explained in detail in a downloadable PDF.

Thinking about these 7 moves in terms of building student agency, brings me to another great blog post this week by Christopher Frost from Tokyo International School about the skills that students need to be independent life-long learners.  As  TIS is a PYP school, these skills are known as Approaches to Learning.  The really interesting thing for me, having just spent 2 days in workshops with Mark Church about making thinking visible, was how Christopher uses the Understanding Map (see my previous blog post on this here) to propose a new way to categorise thinking skills and to tie them in with the various visible thinking routines.  

Photo Credit: justmakeit Flickr via Compfight cc

Using thinking routines purposefully and powerfully

This is my final post based on the Visible Thinking sessions I did with Mark Church at the weekend.

In schools there is a lot to get through but we must never lose sight of the fact that teachers are using language and putting structures into place that give messages about what is valuable.  Of course every teacher is likely to say that she or he values thinking - but what thinking is worth valuing?  As teachers, Mark asked us to reflect on the following:

What - what idea from making thinking visible and creating a culture of thinking has resonated with you most - considering your work with students at this school?

So what - so what about this idea strikes you as particularly important? Why is this so significant for you?

Now what - now what are you thinking a next step could be for you? (in the near term or more broadly and beyond)

Mark talked about turning the traditional view of teaching on its head.  For centuries teaching has been about talking, and students have been expected to listen.  He asked, what if we flip this?  If teaching becomes listening and learning becomes talking?  How can we be sure that the thinking routines that we are using in the classroom are purposeful?  Here are his 3 key learnings:

1. Initially thinking routines often start off as activities, but in order to work over time they have to be seen as integrated and purposeful by the students.
2. Thinking routines become routines only once the edges are soften and both teachers and students can work flexibly with the routine.
3. In the classroom, it’s not just the routines themselves but the interactions that take place around routines that makes them powerful.

We need to avoid using thinking routines to illustrate the content (like a visual aid) or to decorate, enhance or jazz up the content or lesson plan. Thinking routines are not the baubles on the Christmas tree:  Content being decorated with thinking is different from content leveraging thinking opportunities and thinking opportunities leveraging content.  Of course it's important to consider the content - because it's hard to think and wonder when there are no big ideas or when there is not much in the content to think and wonder about. Our content and the thinking that we want our students to be engaged in needs to be dynamic and connected, not one-way and static.  

Final thoughts:  much of the content shared by Mark in his presentations was familiar to me from my time in the International School of Amsterdam.  However being able to engage with it again at a deeper level, and with my colleagues at ASB, was truly amazing - and hopefully transformational.

Photo Credit: ssolaresphotography Flickr via Compfight cc

Recognizing purpose, exploring practices

Lots of teachers have heard about the visible thinking routines and lots of teachers use them, but these routines and practices are only as powerful as they are connected to their purposes.  Making students' thinking visible is a stance - not a programme - to put thinking onto the front burner.

So while there are different ways that schools are using visible thinking, there are also some commonalities:

• Core goal is to develop students’ thinking dispositions - their thinking habits - while deepening their subject matter understanding
• Core belief - dispositions are developed through enculturation in thoughtful settings over time - dispositions cannot be taught, they have to be grown. 
• Core question - how do we influence and shape classroom culture to make thinking a more central aspect of classroom life? Content elicits thinking opportunities. The content becomes accessible via the thinking.
• Core practice - developing thinking routines and documenting them. The practices are NOT the goal - they are in service of developing thinking habits/dispositions. Just doing the routines are not the end goal - they are mechanisms towards the goal. They are practical things to do but must be connected to purpose.

Photo Credit: Duke.Box Flickr via Compfight cc

What thinking is worth making visible?

Last weekend I spent the whole of our Plugged-In PD in the Visible Thinking sessions facilitated by Mark Church.  This is the 4th post about our learning.

On Day 1 of the conference we spent the sessions talking about building a culture of thinking and sending a message to students that thinking matters.  On Day 2 our sessions focused on thinking.   Learning is a product or consequence of thinking, and yet as teachers we put a huge amount of effort into planning all the things we are going to do with our students - the learning engagements - but much less time planning for thinking.  Mark pointed out that thinking needs to be planned for and added into the planners and engagements.  Yet this is hard to do because thinking is invisible, and it's hard to plan things with the invisible - hence the need to make thinking visible, and notice and name the thinking we want done.  Because it's so hard to notice and name the thinking we want students to engage in, it's hard for us as teachers to activate it and to influence it - and this is where the Understanding Map comes in.

The Understanding Map contains the thinking moves that may be useful for developing understanding:

• Consider different viewpoints - What’s another angle on this? (Claim-Support-Question, Circle of Viewpoints, Connect-Extend-Challenge)
• Reason with evidence - Why do you think so? (What makes you say that?, Zoom-in, Claim-Support-Question)
• Make connections - how does this fit? (Connect-Extend-Challenge, 3-2-1 Bridge, Zoom-in)
• Describe what’s there - What do you see and notice (Zoom In, See-Think-Wonder)
• Build explanations - What’s really going on here? (The Explanation Game, See-Think-Wonder, Claim-Support-Question, Zoom In)
• Capture the heart and form conclusions - What’s at the core or centre of this? (CSI - colour-symbol-image, Headlines)
• Wondering - What am I curious about here? (See-Think-Wonder)
• Uncovering Complexity - What lies beneath the surface of this? (Connect-Extend-Challenge, Claim-Support-Question)

Mark pointed out that these routines do not form a taxonomy.  When you look at your subject, at what you want students to understand, you can make a decision about which of these routines will best help students develop a deep understanding.  It's also good to explain to students why you have made these choices - you should use the terms of the routines (for example " I want you to reason with evidence") instead of the simple word "think".  Make sure that you don't simply use the thinking routines as "activities".

Here is a video about the Project Zero Thinking Routines:

PZ Thinking Routines from Sue Borchardt on Vimeo.

Establishing patterns of thinking in the classroom

After lunch I attended another session with Mark Church where we looked at thinking routines and how they differ from strategies or activities.  We asked the questions:

• How do teachers work with, make use of, and develop thinking routines over time? 
• What happens for students when they work with thinking routines over time?

First we needed to make sure we were all on the same page about what a thinking routine is:

Thinking - use of the mind to form thoughts, to reason, to make connections, to consider perspectives, to observe closely
Routine - a pattern of behaviour adopted for a particular circumstance, a rehearsed set of movements or actions that make up a performance.

Routines are in place for all sorts of things in schools - classroom management, evacuation of the building in an emergency etc. Why wouldn’t we expect to put a routine in place when a certain type of thinking is called for?  Students need to be familiar with thinking routines that can be applied to different content.

Thinking Routines are tools that can be used over and over again to support specific thinking and structures through which students explore, document and discuss and manage thinking.  They are patterns of behaviour adopted to help one use the mind to form thoughts, reason and reflect.

Throughout the day we explored a number of visible thinking routines - and saw videos of them in action in the classroom.  I'm excited to be going back again tomorrow - even though it is a Saturday - to dive deeper into thinking.

Photo Credit: the Italian voice Flickr via Compfight cc

What is the story of learning in this place?

In the second session with Mark Church today, we asked the question how do we use students' thinking to navigate their learning forward? We first of all considered our own experience and thought of a time when we've been part of a group that did really good thinking together that really advanced our learning. We thought about what made it that way - what were the factors, influences or practices that made that group such a good thinking group? As we shared out, we noticed many similarities: our groups had a common goal, all voices were heard, we could learn from our mistakes, there was an outcome we cared about, everyone brought strengths, we could be flexible, and our collaborative thinking was valued. This led us to the following conclusion about cultures of thinking:

Cultures of thinking are places in which a group’s collective as well as individual thinking is valued, visible and actively promoted as part of the regular day to day experience of all group members.

We applied this to our schools to ask how we could move away from simply using thinking routines, and move towards "thinking that's routine".  We thought about how a classroom's story gets told - what are we doing to foster this culture?  Again we considered the forces that shape a culture in the classroom: routines and structures, time, opportunities, modeling, interactions and language.  And we came away with a question: If I want to encourage thinking - what I am doing to get the culture into place?

Photo Credit: Anna Marie Gearhart Flickr via Compfight cc

What might we dream of for our learners?

Today and tomorrow we are hosting ASB Plugged-in at school.  We have lots of presenters, but for me I decided to take a deep dive into just one area - to work with Mark Church (an old colleague of mine from the International School of Amsterdam) to really focus in on visible thinking.  We started with some questions:

• What messages are we sending students about what learning is and how learning happens? What do students think learning is? As teachers, do we know what we mean when we ask children to learn? 
• What are kids learning about what learning is when they are with us? What is their conceptual understanding of learning?
• How can we take more notice of the culture of our classrooms - and what it communicates to learners about the value and importance of thinking?
• How might we make students’ thinking more visible, give it more value, and use it to navigate learning?
• How can we send a message to students that thinking matters?

Individually and then in pairs, we discussed the 3 or 4 attitudes, dispositions and habits that we wished students came to your classroom with that would serve their learning well? We came up with 3 broad categories:

1. Social dispositions - attitudes and habits that relate to how groups and people function eg: cooperativeness, humour, empathy
2. Work dispositions - attitudes and habits related to work and school performance eg: persistence, concern for quality, willingness to do one’s best, reviewing one’s work, putting forth best effort
3. Thinking dispositions - attitudes and habits that facilitate and promote effective thinking, eg: open-mindedness, curiosity, skepticism, looking at both sides of the issue (perspective seeking)

We reflected on how early childhood educators tend to value social dispositions more than the others - the others matter but are not as prominent. With high school all 3 categories show up but work dispositions are more prominent. We talked about what a pre-school through high school continuum looks like? Time is given to social dispositions early on - leading to work dispositions later.  But what about the thinking dispositions?  Where do we take a stance to not lose sight of these - how do we get them on the front burner just as much as the other dispositions?

An observation that Mark made was that If the social dispositions and work dispositions are a mess, you would be hard pressed to find thinking going on in a school/classroom. But the converse is not true. Just because social and work dispositions are in place it doesn’t automatically follow that there is a culture of thinking.

So how can we shift a school or classroom culture? We can do this through the use of routines that foster our disposition wishlist (e.g. curiosity and wondering) and through time (which signifies what is most important in our classroom). We can offer opportunities to engage in the routine and use the interactions around these opportunities to explore the dispositions (e.g. reasoning with evidence). The routine is a model for thinking dispositions, something we can do that signifies the teacher’s wishlist. The environment also needs to allow for the routines. The interactions and expectations afford students the opportunities to engage with these dispositions.

Or as Mark put it - the culture is the co-teacher in the classroom.

And perhaps instead of asking what 3 or 4 attitudes, dispositions or habits we want students to come into to our classroom with, we should instead be asking what 3 or 4 attitudes, dispositions, habits do we wish that our students left our classrooms with that would serve their learning well - long after they’ve left us?

Photo Credit: NuageDeNuit | Chiara Vitellozzi Flickr via Compfight cc

Thinkers -v- Test Takers

When I worked in Amsterdam I was part of a 6 year project with teachers from other European countries that started off collecting and recording data about butterflies and ended up looking at our own pedagogy.  We asked ourselves how do we pass on our craft - how do we teach others how to teach?  In most countries we followed a similar path - we did a degree in a particular subject and then learned some methods for delivering this content to students.  The emphasis was on passing on the important facts and understanding - and as such it was all about teaching and not really much about learning.

Assessment also often focuses on the teaching.  Friends in the UK have talked to me about standardized tests and league tables - and the implication is that if your students are doing poorly on these tests that you are a poor teacher and haven't passed on enough content in a way that students can remember it. Teachers, in fact, are often judged on how well students absorb and regurgitate content.  How often have I heard people comment that someone is a good teacher because his or her students always get top marks in examinations!  In Making Thinking Visible this is described as an education system that is "more concerned with producing effective test takers than successful learners".

We know, however, that we need to take the focus off the teacher and place it on the learner - to take it off the specific facts and to focus it onto the ideas and concepts.  This is one of the reasons why I love teaching the PYP as it emphasizes the big, central ideas and asks the question "how best will we learn?" which is about making the curriculum more engaging and accessible.  With an emphasis on approaches to learning and constuctivism, students also learn how to learn as they are not simply taking in information but are actively involved in thinking and making sense of the world.

Rather than teachers simply imparting information, the role of teachers should be to act as models.  Our students need to see us thinking and learning too so that they can learn how we do it.  In Making Thinking Visible it is very clear that "education is much more than the delivery of content.  A quality education is also about the development of the habits of mind and thinking dispositions that will serve students as learners both in our own classrooms and in the future".

Photo Credit: Bill Selak via Compfight cc

Creating Understanding - Beyond Bloom

This weekend I was leading a Making the PYP Happen workshop at my school for our new staff.  In designing the engagements for this workshop I drew heavily on the Visible Thinking routines of Harvard Project Zero.  A number of years ago, when I was working at the International School of Amsterdam, I was lucky enough not only to attend the PZ summer institute, but also to be part of a year long cohort working with Mark Church (who was at that time a middle school teacher at ISA) about teaching for understanding.  Following this ISA embraced the visible thinking routines and Ron Ritchhart visited the school many times to help get this started.  Ron and Mark, along with Karin Morrison, have now brought out a book called Making Thinking Visible which I have been reading.

I'm really interested in the section entitled Beyond Bloom in Chapter 1 as it discusses Bloom's Taxonomy, both the original and the revised one, and whether understanding is really lower-order thinking.  Last year when we did the Tech Audit at ASB we categorized the student artifacts that teachers provided using Bloom's Digital Taxonomy and looked at the ratio of lower to higher order thinking that each artifact contained.  Having read, and discussed and now re-read the chapter in Making Thinking Visible, it has started to change the way I think about Bloom's Taxonomy and whether these learning objectives are sequential or hierarchical.

The example given is that a child painting may actually come to a knowledge and understanding of painting through working in application mode (actually painting - creating something, trying things out, analyzing what happens when paints mix to make new colours, evaluating the results of such mixing and so on).  The authors also point out that "looking carefully to notice and fully describe what one sees can be an extremely complex and engaging task.  Such close observation is at the heart of both science and art."

If we wish to hang onto a hierarchy of thinking, maybe this has to be done within the thinking itself - for example you can describe at a superficial level or a deep one, you can test something to see if it will fail, or you can test the limits of something and work out what will lead to failure.  Thinking often isn't sequential - it's messier, complex, dynamic and interconnected.  The question asked is that if understanding is put forward as a goal of teaching (eg: Understanding by Design) then that understanding can be created using high level thinking in an active and constructive process.  The research at Project Zero indicates that understanding is not a precursor to application, analysis, evaluating and creating - but is the result of it.  It is "not a type of thinking at all but an outcome of thinking."

The same can be true of creating:

It is not necessarily a single direct act but a compilation of activities and associated thinking.  Decisions are made and problems are solved as part of this process.  Ideas are tested, results analyzed, prior learning brought to bear, and ideas synthesized into something that is nobel, at least for the creator.  This creation can be simplistic in nature, as with a child creating a new color; useful, as in the invention of a new iPhone app; or profound, such as new methods for producing energy from never before used materials.

As we collect artifacts and analyse them during this year's Tech Audit, I want to keep these ideas in mind.  Perhaps we shouldn't be looking at the final product or artifact as an example of higher order thinking, but should look more at the process that has happened along the way.

Photo Credit: ssri via Compfight cc