Kids Take Ownership of Their Own Learning

I've blogged extensively about Socratic Seminar.  I love it, it's no secret!  This year during a PD, someone suggested having kids write their own questions.  That was a twist I had not thought of.  Since that PD, that is almost exclusively how I have conducted Socratic Seminars.  Let me explain the process...

Step One

We all know how to use Bloom's action verbs when planning.  I'm sure I'm not unique when I get out the taxonomy page I keep handy and use them in my lesson plans to make sure my kids are thinking at the highest levels.  They are all over the Internet.  Just google it to find a variety you can print and use (linked above is one I really like, especially for the kids!)   

Now here's the twist...teach your kids to use them.  Teach your kids what they mean.  Not all of them, but some of them...the important ones that you use all the time.  Have a whole group lesson on what they mean and how they connect to thinking.  Let the kids read a short, but great story, like Mr. Peabody's Apples. (If you teach 3-6th or even 7th...get this book! You can tie it into your social media lectures lessons. And, yes, Madonna wrote it, but I am not condoning or not condoning Madonna ;) 

You write two or three great Socratic questions to go with that story and share the questions ahead of time.  For example, "Analyze the reason why you think that Tommy shared the information about Mr. Peabody with his friends."  Show them how you pull those verbs into the questions to make your students think.  The reason you want to start with a story book is so that you can get the story read to them and get right into the heart of the story quickly.  

Step Two

Go ahead and let them try their hand at writing a question.  Create an anchor chart that reminds them of some of the Bloom's verbs so that they are always on hand.  

I give each student a post-it note and they come and stick their questions on a piece of paper.  I sort them into similar questions and try to combine them.  Sometimes I give credit on a really good questions by simply saying, "Dani had an excellent question," show it on the projector, make it a big deal, and explain why.  I try not to make it about competing to have the best question.  They know when you are using their question or part of their question.  It's a great way to make them think twice.  They are not only using critical thinking skills to come up with a question, they have to have an opinion about their own response to the questions (remember, Socratic questions don't necessarily have "right" answers!).  I encourage them to write a question for which they could come up with an answer.  

Friends, even third graders can do this.  Maybe not all of them all of the time, but some can most of the time.  Here are a few my kids just wrote from The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.  

Step Three

Conduct your seminar.  If you've never done a Socratic Seminar and would like to know how, I have an introductory product you might find helpful in elementary school.  Click <HERE>.  You may have to supplement some of your own questions at first, but your kids will get the hang of this.  It's great for differentiation.  It allows those kids who can think on these levels to express themselves.  The Socratic Seminar itself is the great equalizer, in my opinion.  It allows those kids who can't put their thoughts on paper to speak their thoughts.  

I always tell the story of my struggling student who could never pass the state tests or even the district practice test.  His mother, who is a teacher, came to me so worried about him. Desperate tears.  I had video taped my Socratic Seminars quite often that year.  I started showing her her son's parts and what he had to say in Socratic Seminar.  Happy tears.  She said, "He CAN think.  He does know the answers."  SO then we both cried happy tears. The end.  

You Gotta Believe!

What Was...

     As I finish my 25th year of teaching that actually started in 1982 (subtract ten years spent being a stay at home mom), you have to understand that I have seen teaching transform.  I have participated in transformation, and again, and then again...some little changes and some really big ones.  I have gone from only teaching whole group lessons to classes of 39 kids, only using worksheets, to using fancier, cuter worksheets, to becoming convinced that small differentiated groups and Daily 5 are the best things since sliced bread.  We at least can agree that a combination of quality whole group lessons in combination with research-based small group instruction and engagement are the gold standard in teaching elementary today.  I truly hope that this system of mixing the two, working with small groups to meet needs,  and finding quality, engaging activities for students stays around for awhile.

     I have seen state testing become high stakes testing.  In Texas, it has gone from TABS, to TEAMS, to TAAS, to STAAR. Testing has become the be-all, end-all in our classrooms from third grade through high school, as you all know!  We've gone from being terrified to "teach the test" to blatantly teaching to the test through district standards.  We have no choice. The TEST is ever in the forefront of our minds.  Teachers have honed strategies that work for them. Some of the strategies are good, and some, who really knows.  Still, I've watched some of my teaching friends hold on to a strategy like it was worth millions, and sadly it's just an "ok" strategy that the teacher loves and can't part with.  I have a few of those myself.  They become our lifelines, like friends we rely on, year after year! And please, nobody come along and make us change that teaching strategy for something else! Don't move our cheese, right?! We all have one way that works well for us. So, yay, strategies!  We do need them sometimes, but we can't solely rely on those.

What Is...

     Next cool thing to rock our teaching world...critical thinking. How many times have you heard a co-worker say, "they just don't know how to think!" That's right, they don't.  They may not even know they're smart!  We have to teach them that they can think.

Cue: QuadrantsBloomsActionVerbsRigorandRelevanceDepthandComplexity

Reading Rockets website defines it like this:  
          "In layperson's terms, critical thinking consists of seeing both sides of an issue, being 
           open to new evidence that disconfirms your ideas, reasoning dispassionately, demanding                 that claims be backed by evidence, deducing and inferring conclusions from available 
           facts, solving problems, and so forth."     
           (http://www.readingrockets.org/article/critical-thinking-why-it-so-hard-teach)

Further clarification about critical thinking and higher order thinking: 

       Our district is working hard to bring critical thinking to front and center of our planning, PLCs, and PD's.  THIS makes me happy!  I am a GT teacher, so critical thinking is "where it's at."  Yet another mandate coming down the pike stresses teachers out.  It takes a great deal of extra planning and thought to weave the quality activities using Bloom's, rigor, relevance, depth and complexity into a daily lesson plan and implementation.  The teachers in our district have a huge heart to do what is best for the kids, as most all teachers do. There is that buy-in aspect that we are working on!  I think we are better than we were a year ago because of it.

What's Missing...

     So here's the disconnect. We are busy planning for our small groups...which by law need to be guided by research-based instruction. We are busy making sure we use technology and keep them all engaged while thinking critically, at all times. Then there's the constant focus on testing that permeates our days and nearly every meeting, lesson, and lesson plan we are involved in. When we rely on practice strategies that teach the tested skills, where does the critical thinking component come in?  We're busy! There is not 100% buy-in from teachers that the critical thinking activities can replace direct instruction of strategies and will bring about the desired skills needed to pass a standardized test. Direct instruction and critical thinking can and should go hand in hand. Time is too precious for another experiment or program to help us teach better!
     There is possibly a lack of trust, and understandably so, on the teachers' part that bringing in large doses of critical thinking is actually going to bring about desired results, and who has time for the extra planning?  If I need to teach main idea and details, I have a direct strategy for that.  How can I be sure that using open-ended activities and critical thinking will get the students "test ready?" First, I think you have to hit a skill from several angles.  The critical thinking activity might be an introduction and then again as a review.  It might be part of the practice phase of a new skill.  I believe if we use the critical thinking components and plan intentionally to consider students' thinking skills in our planning and implementation, we will see results.  We will see more confident students who believe in their abilities. (Kids grow when they use their brain in more ways than answering multiple choice questions.)  Then the next step could be your tried and true strategy.  Next could be the practice in a small teacher-led group for those who still don't have "it." We have to learn to make Blooms part of our lives and our plans...again.  Plan your questions/discussions ahead of time.  Allow the kids to talk and give them something important to talk about!

     We have to change our mindsets when it comes to critical thinking.  It takes work to plan an activity that has both real-world relevance and requires higher level thinking. Here is a tool shared with me by one of my wonderful coworkers (thanks Stephanie H.!)  It is a tool from Byrdseed (LOVE HIS WORK) that will help you to come up with real objectives that take kids deeper with focus on process, depth, and products.  I simply LOVE this tool!  What a help with planning! You're welcome.                http://byrdseed.com/differentiator/#

      Here are some questions to ponder as you move on a determined path to teaching your students to think more critically:

• How are our classrooms structured?  In what ways is thinking encouraged?  (Of course you encourage thinking...but is it presumed that your kids know that they can think beyond a right or wrong answer?)
• Do kids know what you mean when you say "create," "propose," "evaluate," and etc...
• Do kids read with the idea of being responsible for sharing their thoughts about the story or article? (e.g., not just answering multiple choice questions to prepare for "the test") 
• Do students know how to look at a topic through multiple perspectives? 
• Do you provide time for them to think?  Time to discuss with their peers?
• Do they know how to disagree with each other appropriately?
• Do they feel free to disagree; do they even care to disagree?
• Can they defend their positions; do they want to defend their position?
• Can they change their minds if they are persuaded?
• Are they passionate about their thoughts and ideas?
• Do you give them consistent opportunity to use oral language to express ideas?
• Do they automatically know to back up their ideas with evidence from text or other sources? 

That passion is partly up to you, teaching friends. Using oral language goes beyond just answering a single question out loud.  I like to use Socratic Seminar to teach kids to think critically while they read fiction or nonfiction. It has all the opportunities for oral language that I need to incorporate and critical thinking is built right in.

What's Practical... 

     Inference is naturally a critical thinking skill.  Maybe that is why it's so hard to teach. Maybe that's why kids struggle with it, because they have yet to learn how to think critically.  I teach the definition of "inference" explicitly at the beginning of the year.  We never stop working on it all year. They understand that an inference is not just what they think, but requires text evidence.  To teach inference, I use a pre-reading activity in combination with Socratic Seminar.  In the pre-reading activity, I may give them excerpts from the story and have them use the text to make an inference about the story or characters. They then confirm those inferences while reading. We underline clues that led us to the inference.  Socratic Seminars bring in the oral language and critical thinking every time!  I also like the idea of using Critical Friends (free from Ms. Furnas on TPT!) when students present a project or have researched a topic.

     Teaching summary seems straight forward enough.  How do we provide critical thinking opportunities for something so basic as characters, problem, solution?  How about assigning students at tables/in groups a writing assignment after reading a story?  Assign students to write three answer choices for "best summary" of a story you have just read.  Instruct them to create one of them to be "the best",  another the "pretty good", and the third one "not so good."  They then could share their work and the class chooses the correct summary from each group!  What if students had to combine pre-written sentence strips to create a good summary. Include some sentences that didn't belong at all. They would have to distinguish between the sentences that belonged and those that didn't.  This works well with main idea/details too.  So many ways to get higher level and critical thinking into our day!

     I am convinced that keeping a Blooms list of verbs in your view at all planning times and intentionally planning for critical thinking in our classrooms are the best ways to get results on those stubborn tested standards.  (BTW, if you do nothing else today, join this website and get some great information on critical thinking and serving gifted students! http://www.byrdseed.com/

     The good news is teaching critical thinking goes even beyond our classrooms. Adults who can solve problems and work collaboratively are the people employers want to hire.  We become an even more integral part of a child's future when we teach them to think.  I'm certain that teachers are the hardest working people on earth.  We just have to believe that teaching kids to think is going to produce the results we dream of for them. BELIEVE!

Smith, Vernon G., and Antonia Szymanski. "Critical Thinking: More Than Test Scores." ERIC - Education Resources Information Center. NCPEA International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation, Oct. 2013. Web. 27 Mar. 2017.