Mini (or not so mini) Inquiry

I'm proud to be a member of 'The Weavers'. We're trying to weave our standards, inquiry, thinking strategies, and routines together to provide opportunities for our students succeed. Our beautiful questions that we're pondering is, "How do we integrate the standards into inquiry?" All of us feel like we've attempted, or at least dabbled in inquiry, but we struggle knowing that we are meeting all of our standards and curriculum mandates. I've felt like there is so much to teach within a inquiry study. There is the process of inquiry (how we answer questions, reliable sources, synthesizing information) as well as the content.

Artifacts:
Last Friday, I had a lot of thinking to share, although I didn't actually bring any of the artifacts. A little over three weeks ago, I launched into what I thought was a mini inquiry study around nonfiction. I've been very unsure of how an inquiry study looks in literacy around the genres. In the past, I've always approached units through an inquiry lens by immersing ourselves in our genre and noticing characteristics, but I've only continued through the inquiry lens a couple of times.

So, after looking at nonfiction texts for two days for 'threads that weave through nonfiction', I asked  students what they're wondering. I expected to hear crickets, but boy, was I wrong! The students came up with amazing questions. Some questions shocked me, and some of them were very similar to where I wanted us to go in order to address our standards. (Immerse)

As much as I wanted to go back to how I'd envisioned this unit unfolding, these questions were too good to leave unanswered. So, into inquiry we went. Students chose a question they were passionate about, attempted to find answers via Google, interviewing 'experts', and finding examples to support their thinking. (Investigate)

After way longer than I had intended to spend on researching, some students felt super successful in answering their questions, and some are still grappling with some ideas. Regardless, of where they were with their thinking we used Connect, Extend, Challenge to help us synthesize our learning. (Coalesce). 

We're now in the process of writing our findings on our blog in order to share our learning and add to our schema by reading others' posts. . 4th Grade Thinkers Blog (Going Public)

Think, Puzzle, Explore
After going through this process again and having the opportunity to converse with my group, I think that I am integrating the standards more than I feel like I do. Eventhough I felt like I focused mainly on the process and not the content, I was teaching standards. I also need to keep my mind open in terms of reading, writing, small group instruction. I'm doing all of that within our inquiry studies, just for a different purpose at different times (writing to learn vs. writing to share, conferring vs. guided reading, etc.)

One thing I'm still wondering about is what the most effective way to teach kids how to find information on the internet. If that is my mini-lesson, how can I make sure I'm successful? Over the next couple of weeks I plan on taking time to reflect on what standards I addressed during our inquiry study. My hunch is I'm addressing many standards informally, so how can I explicitly teach the skills? I need to know what I'm doing and not doing in order to begin bettering my inquiry instruction.

Reflection on Homework as a Formative Assessment...

Michelle has provided us with many articles around feedback on her padlet, and Using Homework as Formative Assessment was really thought provoking. To give you a little background, depending on the day I have different thoughts around homework. Yes, I also think that is builds independence and responsibility, but otherwise I have mixed feelings. Some days I say to myself, it's just practice-it's ok. On the flip side, I feel like if homework is going to be assigned it should be more meaningful and provide me as their teacher with important information. Well then I get into the debate if the information is really helpful if students have had support at home with the assignment...Blah, blah, blah. I could continue, but I've probably already bored you.

In Grant Wiggin's Using Homework as Formative Assessment he brought up a few points that caused me to think.

1. He said, "What makes a formative assessment formative-is whether I have a chance to get and use feedback in a later version of the 'same' performance." So, not all task, assignments, or homework and formative assessments-only if they are ongoing. In relation to my own practice, our FMJ (Family Message Journal) is formative. Kids get feedback periodically about their writing, and then they have a chance to improve. He pointed out that any other one time assignment would serve as a summative assessment in all reality, although I don't know that I would consider that to be true based on parent support and intervention at home (which is not a bad thing).

2. Then, this article led me to think about what opportunities I give to students to show what they know on homework. I don't always use it as a summative assessment of course, but oftentimes I do glance at them in order to pull small groups and provide extra help. But, when it's just a lame worksheet, that I justify to myself as practice, is it best for kids? Perhaps if homework was more engaging and purposeful, it would be better for teachers and kids.

Obviously, I still have a lot of thinking to do around this topic. Homework falls into the third step of the backwards plan design and should be purposeful. I just need to ponder what my purpose is and what would be best.

Thoughts about Conferring...

One of our Friday PLCs with Michelle was spent really diving into a study around feedback. When I think feedback-conferring automatically pops into my mind, and conferring is one of my strengths-at least I've always thought. I was reassured when I read Debbie Miller's short and sweet article, The Difference Between Conferring and "Touching Base". She reiterates that fact that any time a teacher simply stops and talks with a child it isn't necessarily a conference. Debbie states, "Touching base is all about responding at the surface level to student behaviors", and that it is important. But true learning occurs during a conference. That's our time to "do good" for that individual child. "We reach, touch and teach by being present, putting ourselves in the moment and focusing our full attention on the one sitting by our side," is how Debbie describes conferring.

In my classroom, I confer everyday in both reading and writing. In skills it can look different, but what I'm doing is more than just touching base. Even though I consider myself to be more experienced with conferring I struggle with two things.
     1.) How to confer with everyone to provide feedback and help them grow before I'm evaluating or
          assessing them
     2.) How to use informal anecdotal notes/data from thinking routines, group work, book clubs, etc. to
          serve as a starting point for a conference

In regards to my first struggle, it's actually deeper than conferring. It also relates to providing enough time for students to be taught and coached before being asked to show evidence of learning. Maybe I'm the only one, but sometimes, especially in writing, I feel like we don't practice enough. We have one piece we're crafting through the entire lesson, but then I run into a roadblock when kids don't want to revise their work based on our conferences because in their minds they've worked really hard and are done. Therefore, I need to be a little more creative in crafting the third portion of the backwards design - planning experiences and instruction. I want to confer with every child during their experimentation  and learning before it's a done deal. We don't have to practice show don't tell in a story I guess. Perhaps they practice given a certain scenario. I'm thinking if everyone was writing about the same thing-it'd be easier and faster to confer with kids. I already have the background knowledge. I don't know...  I think this is a battle many teachers battle, but if anyone has any advice-it's greatly appreciated!

Next year I want to get better at using my informal data from class experiments, etc. to help guide my conferences. Currently I feel like my informal data and conference goals aren't related, and it makes no sense. If I see a student struggling to come up with questions during a See, Think, Wonder than perhaps I need to see if their able to form questions when reading their independent text. I'm well aware that this sounds like common sense, but I haven't been making these connections. I've been going into each conference gathering information and then pinpointing a teaching point, etc. This is especially important because of all of the group work and collaboration we do in class. Of course during these times I'm conferring with groups and coaching them further, but this same data could be used in more than one way. It goes back to being data rich and knowing how to use it effectively.

Essential Questions for Realistic Fiction Unit

Over winter break my literacy team and I spent an entire afternoon (Yes! One  whole afternoon!) creating an essential question for our upcoming realistic fiction unit. I went into this meeting thinking each unit has one essential question, and that is what we created. One question incorporating reading, writing, skills, etc. Exhausted after many hours, here was our question:

*How do writers purposefully create and design a meaningful plot that invites their readers to envision and infer?

We weren't completely sold on it, as we felt like it focused just on writing. Although, one has to be able to do this in reading in order to transfer it into their writing. But, shortly after break we did some thinking about Michelle's Friday spent on essential questions. When learning about the different types of overarching and topical questions, I became more confused. I realized that my upcoming unit was missing some crucial essential questions-even after all of our hard work. Units of study should have two to five essential questions created for different reasons was my big learning. 

So, I kept our initial question, but I added a few others. One of the questions I asked was what makes a good character. We used these questions to guide both our reading and writing study. 

After our unit was complete, students reflected on their work by choosing one of the questions and responding. This was the most beneficial reflection I have done in terms of what content students take away. Usually, I'm not extremely satisfied with students' reflections when I ask the basic questions: what did you learn, what did you do well, what do you want to improve on. In the future, I plan on using the guiding questions as part of our reflection for every unit. It was extremely informative! It's amazing what kids do when they too know what they are trying to learn/achieve.

Here are the links to our blogs where students reflected. 

3rd Grade-What makes a good character?

3rd Grade-How do authors create a plot that invites readers to envision and infer?

4th Grade-What makes a good character?

4th Grade- How do authors create a plot that invites readers to envision and infer?

TCAP Chalk Talk

Sadly enough in third and fourth grade we do have to take a chunk of time preparing for TCAP. I'm not just referring to content, but since it's their first or second time we have to prepare students for more of the formatting and routines of testing. As we all know, this can be tough to do because my biggest goal is to try and look at the bigger picture and purpose of testing. (Which is always clear for me.)

This winter I wasn't quite sure what my fourth grade students remembered from taking TCAP in third grade, so I was unsure about what to review. So, I decided to have the students use a chalk talk to show what they know, but also review or learn from other people's comments. 

By no means was this part of a backwards designed TCAP unit, but it's real life. The content needed to be covered, and I was able to use the chalk talk thinking routine to do it in a different way. The less time I spend up front talking to the kids the better. For the chalk talk I posed four questions to the class. 

1. ) How do we show what I know on tests?

2.) How do we prepare for tests?

3.) What do we notice about tests?

4.) What do we notice about ourselves as test takers?

Here are their responses:

After looking at their responses, allowing the students to participate in a gallery walk, and answering questions I felt very comfortable what background knowledge they had. In reflecting on our weeks leading up to TCAP, I also feel really good about using a chalk talk to prepare-not just another conversation. When I am planning and have determined the end goal (what I want students to know/do) it's easy for me to get stuck in a certain routine. The thinking routines can be very helpful in accessing thinking through the strategies in a different way. I feel like this went really well, and I plan on doing something similar in the future. 

The C: Color of CSI: Color, Symbol, Image

Both my third and fourth grade classes begins each day with our weekly poem. We spend at least one week on a poem, each day discussing our thinking and noticings or completing different routines to push our thinking. There are many purposes for implementing morning poem: First of all, it is one time during the day when oral fluency is emphasized. Secondly, this is one way I can address many different standards while exploring poetry. The new common core standards do not focus on writing poetry, but being able to make meaning of poetry is incredibly important. Also, many literary techniques and skills lessons are reinforced in our discussions.

This particular week we were working on Winter Eyes. 

Each week when planning poem, I think about what skills and standards we need to cover. I have a list of skills I plan to discuss. (This could be considered a very informal version of backward planning.)  In looking at this poem, I wanted students to clarify unknown vocabulary (colbalt, birch, velvet, sleet), notice sensory details, notice the organization, use their background and/or inferences to infer what is meant by the last two lines, and of course make meaning of the poem.

On Mondays students start by tracking their thinking. Then, the remainder of the days are spent discussing student's thinking and noticings. They lead our discussions, but I have an agenda of my own. If by Thursday they haven't addressed a point I wanted to discuss I will ask questions to spark their thinking. 

This happened to be a week where the students worked through these expectations quickly. We still had one day to work with the poem and deepen our understanding, so I decided to use a the Color, Symbol, Image thinking routine to guide us. Although, since it was our first attempt at using the routine, I just started with the color. (We only spend roughly ten minutes on poem each day.) I asked them to determine what color they thought represents the poem and explain what made them think that. The color that they chose was not extremely important, although it was a good measure of comprehension. It was more important to me that they explain their thinking, hopefully using evidence from the text. 

Overall, CSI was an intriguing routine to use because it allowed students to share their thinking in a different way than usual. I feel like I need to use it more consistently in order to get deeper results, but I was pleased with their thinking being it was our first attempt. Below are a few students responses.

The explanation for why this student chose white.

Step Inside

Connect: As we've been studying different time periods of Colorado history the kids have been asked to synthesize all of their learning and thinking around the time period and show off their understanding of the content. For both our Native American and trapper, trader, & explorer units students have taken their understandings from a variety of sources to write from the perspective of someone who lived at that time. My goal is for them to use fact to create a sensory image in the readers' minds. The reader should feel like they are with the character.

Extend: This is one of the thinking routines that I can honestly say I'm using as a routine. Throughout our Colorado study and the remainder of the year we are focusing on synthesis as a tool for understanding. So in my conferring (more with fourth than third) I've been asking students to share how they are synthesizing in order to complete their pieces. I know it's still at a surface level, but it's been great to talk through our strategy study in writing as well as reading.

Challenge: When completing our initial 'Step Inside' some kids had an easier time than others writing a 'story' per say. My wonderful teammate (Sarah) had made a graphic organizer containing prompting questions from the Making Thinking Visible text. Many of our third grade students wrote from a perspective of a Native American, but they simply listed answers to the prompting questions. I truly wanted them create a 'snapshot' or small moment of the person's life. We're currently in the second round of these pieces narrating the lives of either a trapper, trader, or explorer traveling through Colorado. With these pieces I decided to use our writer's notebooks instead of the graphic organizer-focusing more on the sensory images. So far I see less list like facts and touching stories.

The Micro Lab Protocol

Connect: Having meaningful conversations is such a large focus in our classroom, and now that it is in the standards it is even more concrete. We had recently been on a field trip, and Val and I decided to have our kids discuss the field trip, what struck them, and what questions they have by using the Micro Lab Protocol. The purpose of this protocol is to ensure all voices are heard and ideas attending to before actually discussing the topic of conversation. It is very structured, but it was unlike anything we had done before. Here is how it works:
-Share: The first person in the group shares for  a set amount of time while the other members actively listen without talking. ~2 minutes
-Pause: Take thirty seconds of silence to absorb everything that was said.
-Repeat: Follow the same routine for the other members.
-Discuss: As a group refer to comments make, make connections, and share ideas around group member's ideas.

Extend: After having our group discussions we not only reflected on the field trip-but also the protocol that guided our conversation. What did they think about using it? Did it help their conversation? If so, how? The kids had varying feelings about the protocol, but most seemed open to using it again during conversations. We did all agree the thirty minutes of silence was awkward, but after laughing we concluded it could be beneficial for some groups.
 Some quotes from their reflections were:
                                    "It helped me not talk when other people are."
                                    "Normally it would be really hard to work with the whole group was talking all at
                                     the same time. This way we all got to have one minute to talk."

Challenge: Oftentimes I struggle with protocols that are so struggled and feel anything from authentic. But I remind myself that perhaps this is how we learn to be really good speakers and listeners. We have to slow down to reflect on our actions and how they effect conversations. Now, I'd like to continue to use this protocol, but it does have to be in the right context. This type of structured format doesn't work in all conversations.

I used to think...now I think

Connect: While studying the Native American's of Colorado's past, I wanted to let the kids research and discover information on their own via a great website we found for Colorado history.
http://hewit.unco.edu/dohist/themes.htm In doing this, I still wanted the kids to be deeply thinking, asking questions, activating their background knowledge and making inferences as they looked a the photographs and read the captions.

Extend: Before we even got on the website kids organized their notes by sections of Native American history. Then, they went through and wrote what they know today (what I used to know) and what I know now (now I think). By activating their background knowledge they filled in what they already knew. As kids explored the website on the Ipads they jotted down noticings. Finally, students reread their notes, determined what was important, thought about how their thinking changed, and filled out the 'now I know'. Overall, I think students were rather amazed at how much their schema grew from looking at the website and conversing with their partners. It is really powerful to see-especially for some of those kids who were apprehensive to write they didn't know anything or very little about a topic before we began. What a great visual.

Challenge:
This seemed like such a natural way to use this routine because when we're reading to learn new information  our thinking is changing so much. I've struggled with how to help kids realize what they thought before reading, researching, etc. Hence, that is why we wrote what we knew today prior to looking at the website. Hopefully, that will change over time. I also can't help but think about how our study of synthesis ties into this as well. Maybe kids will embrace more of their evolving thinking rather than feel inadequate. Perhaps someone else has been successful with helping kids truly reflect on their evolving thinking after the fact, not during?

The 4 C's

Connect: Our third & fourth grade interdisciplinary unit is around rights. One of the recommended texts is The Story of Ruby Bridges. After reading the text I felt like we needed to go further, and I chose to use the 4 C's routine in order to help us do this. Knowing that we are constantly working to improve our conversation skills I thought the routine would provide us with content to discuss. The routine ask students to think about the following after reading a text:
-Connections (What connections can you draw between the text and your own life or learning?)
-Challenges (What ideas, positions, or assumptions do you want to challenge or argue with?)
-Concepts (What key concepts or ideas do you think are important and worth holding onto from the text?)
-Changes (What changes occurred in the text, characters, or your own thinking?)

Extend: I knew that it would take time to review what each of the c's meant, especially for third grade. Therefore, we started off our lesson with a big class chart-defining what each of the c's meant. I didn't expect the kids to completely understand concepts-but we used words like theme, moral, and then for kids who were still stuck I just said in one sentence what would you say this book is mostly about. Then kids had at least something to write down on their own chart.

As you can imagine kids had a lot of different thoughts. For example, some third graders wrote down connections like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr., I won't lie-I was a little worried as I read some of their thoughts on their charts, but I was pleasantly surprised in the way they helped each other synthesize and clarify the information through conversation.

Challenge: Like I said before, my students and I have been working really hard on conversation skills and how we can deepen discussions. As we broke into our small groups for conversation,  my students reverted back to robots as they read their thinking from each box. I had to pull everyone back in for a quick 'catch' and review how we build on each others' thoughts. After this, most groups were able to deepen their conversations. So, my challenge wasn't necessarily around the 4 c's thinking routine-but the conversations that came with it. Overall, I was pleased with the 4 c's routine. It was challenging for the kids, but it pushes us out of our comfort zone. It's also nice because it can be used with fiction or nonfiction texts.

Generate-Sort-Connect-Elaborate: Concept Maps

What we're working on & why it's important:
As we returned from holiday break we dove into our study of  Denver & Colorado. In kicking off our study we went on a field trip to the new Colorado History Center. Before we visited the museum I knew the amount of background knowledge the kids had varied, and I also knew they'd return with a plethora new knowledge. Therefore, I decided to use the concept map as a structure to hold and organize their thinking, as I can't expect them to immediately hold, understand, and make meaning of their learning.

 

What I did:
One day prior to our trip we began by listing everything we knew about Denver or Colorado on a blank piece of paper. As you can imagine, our background knowledge varied. Some kids wrote places they'd visited around the state, and others listed things such as Broncos and skiing. Then after returning from the Colorado History Center we went back to our brainstorming and added more people, places, things, etc. that we know about Denver and Colorado. Finally, I asked them to flip their paper over, and write 'Colorado History' on the center of their paper. From there, students placed  items from their list on their 'map' in relation to importance. If they thought something was really important they placed it close to the center box. If an item was not that important to Colorado's past or present they put it near the outside of their paper. Then, partners shared at least three items on their map with one another explaining why they placed the item where they did on their map.

What I learned:
The conversation was the best part of the routine. Hearing the students defend their decisions is where the learning occurred. From conversing with one another, some students changed their thinking, agreed to disagree, or left pondering certain topics.This routine reminded me again of the importance of conversation. I was surprised by the amount of knowledge students brought back and how different it was. When the students completed these concept maps I was able to assess what information they took away from the museum, which helps guide my instruction.

Impact on Instruction & Students:
I didn't intend for this map to serve as a pre-assessment, but it did. Therefore, it has helped me plan through our unit. The field trip and concept map together also sparked the students' interest in Denver & Colorado, which has helped guide our study.

How will I use this learning in the future:
In the text, the final step of this routine is the connecting phase. Students draw lines making connections between items on their map. We have yet to complete this step because I didn't feel like the kids had the background knowledge to make the connections yet. I plan on going back to this at the end of our study as a way to for students to synthesize their learning. I feel like I'd like to use the concept map again in the future as a way to organize our thinking. Perhaps we could use them to help us chronologically organize our thoughts about a certain period in history...