Marking Meaning

I came away from my visit to Annie Wright impressed with the usefulness of making organization explicit. I saw four classes that day. All of them in one way or another took advantage of themes, summaries and lists to organize and reinforce learning.

In terms of lists, three of four teachers explicitly specified their goals for the class. Three had a "Plan for Today" posted on the board. Two reinforced this with an announcement at the beginning of class. These simple gestures reinforced what the teacher was trying to accomplish.

In watching a class on the Book of Genesis, I got a sense of how much themes help students find meaning in material. As a student, it is easy to wade into a reading assignment and not know what is important. Providing students with themes helps them to organize and make sense of what they are reading.

The History Department at Annie Wright has 7 Themes that they work with when exploring historical material:

1. Patterns of Population (numbers and migrations)


2. Economic Networks of Exchange


3. Uses/Abuses of Power
   


4. Haves/Have Nots


5. Expressing Identity


6. Environment/Technology/Science


7. Spiritual Codes/Ethics

It was clear that the class had established these themes early in the year...so no explicit definitions were offered the day I was there. However, I saw that having categories helps students find their way in unfamiliar material: the students went through the text (a fairly short reading assignment: Genesis 1: 27-30) in small groups and identified passages that reflected or referred to these themes in some way.

Then at the end of class, the teacher and students summarized what the class had discovered. This too reinforced what they had learned. The teacher reminded them to continue to think in terms of the 7 themes while reading over the weekend. In this way, the students are acquiring a habit of thinking about these ideas when reading historical material and are learning to consistently look for this kind of information, to ask: what does this text show about the way X thought about ethical behavior? About the way power was shared (or not shared) in this society? About the way they related to their environment and used technology?

Most of the core Humanities classes have a set of questions at each grade level: i.e, "Who should rule?" in 10th grade and "What is the relationship of the individual to the state?" at 11. These questions/themes are a Good Idea and we should be sure to keep them in play.

Harkness Skills

In my last post, I described the philosophy behind the Harkness Table. It was clear from watching classes at Annie Wright that the students knew this philosophy and were consciously trying to enact these principles in their conversation. To describe a Harkness Table in action:

The conversation is almost 100% student driven. The teacher sits at the table with the students, asking an occasional question but mostly just observing and making notes. During the conversation I observed, the teacher was 100% un-bothered by moments of silence, some of them lasting longer than I usually allow. When a moment of disagreement verging on confusion emerged during the conversation, the teacher sat right through it, obviously paying attention but not jumping in to clarify. It was also very striking that the students in this class almost never volunteered a comment without referring to the text to support their contribution. I will sometimes let my students refer to Lord of the Rings or Oprah if they appear to be making a genuine attempt to illuminate a relevant idea. In this class, that never happened. Every comment included textual support:

"On page 71, column B," the author says..." or
"Going back to Mariah's comment about p. 68."

The students actually talked like this. Students were also trained in structuring their conversation.

"Adding on to what Michelle said..".
"The passage on p. 70 confused me because..."
"I think the importance of Cathy's point is also shown on pg. 68"
"I actually disagree. I think the real reason is on p. 72."
"I think we may have skipped over something." (Student adds point.)
"I think we might be getting off-track. X happened for a lot of reasons." (Student then summarized the conversation so far.)

Students actually said all of these things.

After 30-35 minutes of this, the teacher stepped in and asked the students to summarize the conversation: what were the major themes and ideas? It was at this point that he clarified the confusion that had emerged 10-15 minutes earlier in the discussion. He then asked the students to evaluate the conversation: what grade would you award yourselves and why? When one of them suggested a B+, he disagreed, pointing out that three students had not said a word during the class. One student pushed back and said that although some were silent, most had done a good job of "always digging deeper" in the text. It was clear that all the students would all get the same grade for the conversation. This self-evaluation was the end of class.

I will end by adding a list of the skills that the Harkness method wants every student to exercise in class. Some of these are quite self-explanatory, but students might need to be explicitly taught language for some of these things:

• organizing, leading the conversation
  
• summarizing, re-stating or clarifying the text
• citing specific quotations or passages from the text
• asking a question about the text
• commenting on the text, giving an opinion or reaction
• making a suggestion about the text or discussion
• summarizing discussion up to that point
• analyzing text or a comment or the whole conversation up to that point
• reacting to comments
• answering comments
• re-starting discussion
• filling in a gap
• arguing a point, disagreeing
• asking for new information
• asking for other comments, reactions
• comparing to other works

It was very striking to me how rooted in the text this work is. There was absolutely a culture of "Where's your proof?" "Where do you see this?" "Find it in the text." However, reading assignments are significantly shorter than reading assignments I typically give. For example, in one class I observed, students had been asked to read from p. 64-71; in another p. 1-10 and p. 17-20.

The Harkness Table

"Civilized discourse must be at the core of all good education and all full lives."

--Edward Harkness

Edward Harkness was an American oil magnate and philanthropist who generously supported medicine, the arts and education during his lifetime (1874-1940). His interest in education led to the development of the "Harkness Table" which Melody and I saw in action today at Annie Wright.

The Harkness Table is a kind of round (or oval) table discussion. It is not unlike a fishbowl, in that the teacher's role is very scaled back. The main difference between a Harkness Table and a Fishbowl seems to be the amount of explicit protocol involved. The students we saw today were highly trained in a specific approach to classroom conversation. The Harkness Table has clear philosophical underpinnings as well as specific skills which inform it.

I'll go into the skills in a later post, (they won't surprise you), but the philosophy is interesting and made a noticeable difference in the tenor of the conversation. What follows are the "cultural beliefs" that underlie this approach to class discussion.

1. Everyone at the table is an equal. Everyone's ideas are of value and interest.

2. Everyone can agree or diagree with everyone's ideas.

• These agreements/disagreements should be about the ideas, not the people.


• They should be made politely.


• They should be backed up by specific reference to the text to provide evidence for your opinion.
  

3. If classmates don't contribute, we need to help them do so (because we believe they want to.)

4. If classmates don't contribute, they may be behaving selfishly.

5. There should be little or no silence.

6. The discussion should show a connection of ideas in a long, connected thread, including segues to the next big question.

7. The conversation should feel "natural."

8. At the end we do not need to agree about what we believe the text is saying, but we do need to understand each other's beliefs.

To be honest, the conversation I observed today did not exactly feel "natural." However, it was serious, informed and very productive. I am intrigued the idea of having this kind of highly structured academic conversation be part of my students' skillset and my regular routine.

The Harkness Table was originated at Philips Exeter but has been adopted at many schools and is ubiquitous on-line, if you want to check it out. I will be writing more about the specific skills that are required and the way I saw it working.

Student Engagement

John, Daren, Harumi, Ann and I had a useful conversation at our department meeting last Tuesday. We mulled over a bunch of topics, but one of our themes was how to maximize student participation and engagement in the classroom.

These are some of the things we noticed:

1. Preparation really helps. Something that I have been trying this quint is setting Reading Questions with every night's assignment. Of course, we are free not to pursue this subject...but creating some sort of expectations seems to set up richer conversations than simply asking the students to come in with with passages which are "interesting."

2. Daren noted that he often begins a discussion with a brief response exercise. Taking a few moments to write gives the students a chance to collect their thoughts before being called upon to articulate/defend them.

3. Even the tried-and-true "Share with a Partner" technique can be more productive if you add a step: Think-Pair-Share. If students are given a moment to flip through their texts and make notes, they will often make better use of the moment when they are invited to turn to their neighbor and share an idea. (How often have you noticed that small groups/pairs often start off off-topic?)

4. Harumi has found that setting goals with students is useful in increasing participation. Conference can be a comfortable place to draw students out; once they have ventured a few ideas there, you can challenge them to wade into section discussion. Even give them a deadline: "By the end of the next week, I expect you to_____________." Or even," Tomorrow, I am going to ask your opinion about ____________. " (Of course, you have to remember that you told them that!)

5. Both Daren and Heather M have attested to the usefulness of Opening Broadly to increase student engagement. Heather and Daren recently started their class with accessible State-Your-Opinion kind of questions, i.e.: "What constitutes a "right?" or "Is there value in reading a play written over 2,000 years ago?"

Students like to weigh in on this sort of thing...and then they feel invested in learning more. Content you present after this kind of a warm-up falls on a relatively receptive audience.

6. Finally, I am reminded of an article JB sent me earlier today, an article in The Washington Post by Daniel Willingham, who reflects on how Prior Knowledge Affects Reading Comprehension. Willingham points out that any student tackling a reading assignment will understand more of it if they have a frame of reference for approaching the issue: some vocabulary, key concepts or a sense of why they should care. Armed with these, students have a measurably easier time actually understanding the text. If they've simply been told to read it "for tomorrow," students understand measurably less of what they read...and reading strategies like Highlighting and Annotating don't seem to change that.

Observations on Observation

This week I have been observed three times and I must say, the more it happens, the more I like it! This is from someone who previously stressed for days at the thought of having a colleague in my class.

Heather, Ann, Ellen and two board members visited my class this week. I have appreciated their gentle presence in the back of the room, their tactful participation (when offered) and most of all, I appreciate the incredibly thorough feedback which HH provided afterwards over a cup of coffee.

Things that made this observation a rewarding experience:

1. Heather picked up the tab for the coffee.

2. Heather and I talked beforehand about how I perceive my skill set as a teacher. I asked her to check in on a couple of areas which I still think I need to work on (i.e. clarity of instructions).

3. I designed a lesson plan which I thought would expose my weaknesses in this area (WHOA! Talk about personal bravery!) and emailed it to her in advance.

4. I gave her a chart with all the students' names and room for comments (in fact, the very same chart I used recently during my Fishbowl activity).

5. HH took meticulous notes during class. She paid attention to my behavior and my students' behaviors. Her vantage point at the back of the room enabled her to see things I couldn't. Icing on the cake was that she knew these students and was able to comment on how they had changed (or not changed) over the years.

6. We checked in again afterwards and shared our impressions of the lesson.

It was quite an affirming experience! HH identified strengths I didn't know I had, allayed my fears about fuzzy instructions (at least for this one class) and provided me with valuable feedback about my interactions with students.

Heather also identified a weakness or at least a quirk that I was quite unaware of. She noticed that if I find a student interpretation less-than-compelling, I will become tentative in my feedback. To avoid "hurting the student's feelings," I hedge in my response; I'll say: "Well, I think..." and then try to re-direct. HH observed that sometimes it is more supportive of the students to be direct in offering correction: "Actually, that is not a metaphor. That is meant to be taken literally. Check the words again." Clear feedback lets students know where they are.

Who knew?

Thank you so much for your energy and time, HH, and I look forward to hearing from the rest of you as the year unfolds.

Interactive Lecture

Ben gave me a great article by Rob Weir, published in the April 29 issue of Inside Higher Ed. Weir offers an approach he calls "didaction," a mix of exposition and student participation. The article offers a lot of great ideas for keeping student involvement strong, even in a lecture situation. Some of the best of these include:

• Brainstorm: pepper your lecture with open-ended questions and invite students to offer ideas.

• Ask "affective" questions: students often hesitate to offer "right/wrong" answers, but many are willing to volunteer how something makes them feel or think. This gets them more personally invested in what you are presenting.
  

• Say it in pictures: No one likes to listen as the presenter reads a slide aloud. However, images are engaging...especially when students are asked to comment on them. Maximize moments where you can convey information by summarizing and affirming correct assumptions the students have extracted from images, graphs or maps.

• Story-telling: Students naturally remember stories. Take advantage of opportunities to package information as mini-stories.

• Be controversial/provocative/silly: if you notice that the class is drifting, ask an outrageous question or make an outlandish claim and demand to be corrected.

• Role-play: You can wade into the audience (which alone changes the mood and gets their attention) and ask questions. Ask more than one student--"What were the weaknesses with this point in the treaty?" or "Why does Descartes distrust the evidence of his senses?" This bit of drama can drive the point home.

• Encourage interruptions: Make your presentation an experience students feel free to join in with comments or questions.
  

• End with a question: it's always better not to end your presentation by simply running out of time. It can be effective to end with a puzzle or problem or question...something that previews material to come or that reflects back on what they've already learned.

Thanks to Ben for sharing this article. If anyone else reads/notices/does anything cool, let us know. You can comment or post or just let me know and I'll post.