EduBlog Insights

I’m back to Ellin Oliver Keene’s keynote at the TRLD conference. There is so much to continue to share from this dynamic conference. This is a continuation of making the dimensions coming alive “when we understand.” My first post was “Does it make sense?”

Keene went on to say that

when we dwell in ideas - we need time to be silent, we need time to listen to our own thinking, to reflect purposefully on an idea.

Here are the strategies she suggested for making this dimension come alive in the classroom:

• Set aside some chunks of class time for focused, silent work in which students can concentrate on more deeply understanding one idea - when they have time to listen to themselves think and consider subtleties rather than rushing to memorize the next thing.
• Model how proficient readers frequently re-read and re-think portions of text - kids often think that re-reading means starting at the beginning and re-reading everything - show them how readers pick and choose among the portions of text they choose to explore more deeply.
• Teach kids about meta-cognition - thinking about one’s own thinking - and the seven most common meta-cognitive strategies.

Here’s a list of those strategies:

1. Connecting the known to the new
2. Determining importance, learning the essence of text
3. Questioning, delving deeper into meaning
4. Using sensory images to enhance comprehension
5. Inferring, finding the intersection of meaning
6. Synthesizing, discovering the contour and substance of meaning
7. Solving reading problems Independently, empowering children to move from problem to resolution

It is so very true that we need time to be silent, we need time to listen to our own thinking, to reflect purposefully on an idea. We need it. Our students need it. Our current focus on testing as our sole measurement of the learning of our students has done more damage to what teaching and learning should be about than any other thing. Just think what we could accomplish if we took the testing prep time and the actual test taking time and translated that back to conversations in our classrooms, conversations on our blogs, and conversations in our professional development that focus on kids connecting ideas, exploring those ideas deeply and discovering what ignites them to be passionate about their learning. Every minute that kids spend focused on covering all the skills and then moving on to another skill on the test is time not spent building a dynamic learning community in our schools. When I think about what has been abandoned in our schools in order to raise scores I cringe. We need to dwell in ideas not continue the insanity of focusing only on raising scores. It’s our biggest obstacle to reflecting purposefully in our classrooms.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 8th, 2007 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Comprehension, Conferences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.