This week on the podcast, we start our three-part series on Engaging Reluctant Learners. Kelly Boswell, Maria Nichols and Jennifer Lemp are three educators who came together over their shared ideas on how to address the foundation and support students need to truly engage. They will discuss three key principles, staying curious about students, reducing classroom anxiety and understanding genuine engagement. First up today, staying curious about students.
Transcript
Kelly Boswell:
Getting curious about kids is noticing what are we picking up in their body language that's telling us whether they feel open and safe to engage in learning, or if they're trying to become small and feeling anxious. "Don't call on me." "I don't know what I'm doing." "I don't feel like I belong." And that's in mathematics, that's in talk, and that's in literacy, that feeling of safety and being curious about what we're seeing kids do in the classroom can then lead us to think about what are some strategies once they feel safe, what are some strategies that we can use to help them be more engaged? Readers, writers, talkers, and mathematicians.
Jennifer Lempp:
I think one of those strategies is even how we talk about the subjects ourselves. What is our stance on these subject areas? And we hear phrases all the time like, "Oh, I'm not a math person. I was never good at math." I have sat in countless parent-teacher conferences where I've heard like, "Oh, he gets it from me. I wasn't good at math either." And we allow that to be acceptable. We use phrases like that. And so instead, I think it's really important that we don't let phrases like that cross our lips, those phrases, those beliefs, those come from our own instructional experiences. And when students are struggling with a topic or a concept, they might believe that, "Oh, I'm struggling because I'm lumped into that group that's just not a good math person, or not a math person at all," rather than seeing some of this struggle as a great opportunity to learn. So, one huge step is just thinking about how we are talking about these subject areas, even if we didn't have positive experiences as students ourselves.
Maria Nichols:
I think it's also being curious about who they are as human beings. There's such reciprocity between building a communal, robust social emotional space in children's ability to think and talk together. They're not going to bring their full selves to a conversation and trust that their voice is valued and their tentative thoughts are valued if they don't know each other. And so engaging in ways at the beginning of the year that centers children, reading those fabulous books that allows them to explore the human condition and begin to think and talk, and for us to hold space for their voice and facilitate in ways that lets them know that their ideas are welcomed here. Even the most tentative ideas can be the start of fabulous, fabulous conversations. And we help them to understand that they're not speaking to answer questions. They are speaking to construct with each other.
And so it changes who they think they are, and what they think they're doing in this space. And the more that we open space and lift them as they talk together, the more trusting they become in the environment, and the more of themselves they're willing to put in. I used to talk about it as being space where children take risks, but it's Peter Johnston who says that if we get this right, there's no risk. That's the way our curiosity can lead us to build these spaces, and then lower anxiety and really create robust learning environments for children.
Jennifer:
I've never really met a teacher who wasn't willing to change their instructional practices to help support a kid. Every teacher out there wants to do whatever they can for a child. And so it's in that space of being curious that we learn what they know and what they don't know yet. If we're filling the entire class period with our own voices, then we don't allow that space to be filled with children and their voices and their thoughts. And once we know what they know, then we can address it. When we know what they don't know yet, then we can find a way to help support them.
Maria:
And that comes back to that thoughtful facilitation of their talk, creating spaces for their voices, creating space for their questions. Because their questions so often are so much better than my questions and lead us to much richer discoveries. They are the drivers of the talk. It's not us controlling what's happening.
Kelly:
One of my mentors put it this way that the smartest person in the room is the room. So, in my work with teachers, I'm often reminding teachers that this smartest person in this professional development setting is the room. So, my job as the facilitator is to get the room talking because that's where the learning and growth will take place. I also remind teachers that the smartest person in their classroom is the room. So, the more they can facilitate that talk in the classroom, in mathematics, in literacy, in all curricular areas, then they can listen into those partner talks to the class discussions and everyone learns and grows, including the teacher.
Edie:
Maria, from your perspective, what about those students who just really have a hard time inserting themselves at all?
Maria:
One of the things I've come to realize over years and years of working with groups of children is that we all have unique talk personalities. And not only are they unique to us, but they're situational too. We all behave differently in different contexts. And so if you think about the range of students in a classroom, you're going to have your students who seem to talk easily, talk readily. They talk to think. They're basically thinking aloud as they talk. And then you have your more contemplative students, the ones who really need time to mull things over in their head before they're going to feel comfortable saying anything. And then you have children who are shy, children who come with cultural differences. And all of this gets smashed together in this tiny little space where we're all trying to navigate each other's as learners.
And so one of the things I've come to realize is that we need to offer different means for children to get their voice into a conversation. We might need to take some quiet time, a moment or two to think. We often need partner talks so that the child who's not comfortable speaking whole group can turn to a partner, turn to a small group. That time in partner talks or small group talk can help a multilingual learner who's also translating in their head simultaneously.
The other thing that I think we need to hold onto is that awareness is that big ideas expand beyond a single conversation. So. A child who doesn't get their voice in one day, we know that those conversations, those ideas linger with us. And if we touch back the next day and the next day, they might find their voice. So often we're charting as we're talking. Allowing children to jot a sticky note and put their sticky note up on the chart can be a fabulous way for a child to get their voice into the conversation. Being aware of the range of talk personalities in the classroom, being aware that those talk personalities might shift a bit. Some might be more talkative during math time, some during literacy time. It just depends. But being sensitive to that and finding multiple avenues for voices to emerge.
Jennifer:
Maria, one of the things that teachers will sometimes ask me is, "How do I know whether or not I should teach this topic in whole group or in small group in the area of mathematics?" And one of the things I talk to them about is what is the discourse like? What is the confidence of your students when they're in whole group? If you have the same few hands that are always going up, answering questions and the same people who are always doing the talking, then get those students into some smaller groups, the cooperative groups, but also small groups even with teachers so that they can understand what does this look like, sound like, and feel like when we're having conversations? And with that little bit more of support, it can help to build their confidence.
Maria:
I was working with a teacher with a third grade group beginning of the year, just getting to know her kids. And we noticed that same dynamic, just verbally proficient children in the room and some children who she wasn't hearing at all. And we decided on a whim to ask the kids what they thought was going on, why are we hearing some voices and not others? And they outlined it perfectly for us. They understood the difference in the personalities. They understood the more talkative ones readily said, "I need to create space for others." We ended up with a list of strategies that we were going to work on for creating space for all voices that came directly from the students, and was probably stronger than the list we would've developed, but they're so aware of all of that. It's incredible.
Jennifer:
We make some charts too, like anchor charts, to help support the discourse. And sometimes I've started it with teachers where we make them for the students, but occasionally as we're learning maybe a new learning station, or game, or we're thinking about what it would look like, and sound like, and feel like to have those conversations with each other, we'll make sentence frames and sentence starters and post them to help support the discourse. It stops some of that parallel play that can happen when students are engaging and solving problems together. So instead, some of those sentence frames and sentence starters to help them know when we're talking to each other, when we're doing this math activity, these are some things that we can use to start that conversation. Especially because sometimes I feel like they were used to maybe some more quiet rooms in mathematics.
Maria:
I'm used to telling answers as opposed to constructing, understanding together.
Jennifer:
I just was thinking about what that looks like in comparison to maybe how many of us grew up in education or our own instructional experiences, and how that might be different. Where in mathematics, it used to be a pretty isolated content area where everybody worked alone, and you worked quietly, and sharing answers was seen as cheating. Where now we're establishing the type of classroom where students are, we want to amplify their voice in the classroom. And so how we meet student needs, we won't be able to meet their needs if we don't know what they know. And so watching a teacher solve problem after problem on a board only to record what their watching a teacher do, all of that mimicking. That's not student thinking. Only asking questions if they don't know what's happening or only speaking, and only raising your hand if you're absolutely certain have the right answer.
That doesn't help a teacher really know students, and it doesn't help us amplify those voices in the classroom. So, even some ways that we can have student reflect at the end of a classroom can tell us a lot, asking students not only about their learning, but maybe about their disposition towards the subject area and the content they're learning about. Every piece of information that I get about a student helps me be a better teacher. And sometimes that might be where are they with their mathematics learning, the actual content that we're doing. And sometimes it's how are they feeling about this? How are they feeling about the partnerships? How are they feeling about the speed that we're kind of tackling some of this content? Their disposition matters. And if we don't ask, we won't know.
Edie:
Thanks for tuning in today. Join us next week for part two on Engaging Reluctant Learners, Reducing Classroom Anxiety. You can learn more and read a full transcript at blog.heinemann.com.
About the Author
Kelly Boswell has many years of experience as a classroom teacher, staff developer, literacy coach, and district literacy specialist.
Her latest book, Every Kid A Writer, will be available in October 2020. She is the coauthor of Crafting Nonfiction and Reading Solutions and the author of Write This Way and Write This Way From the Start. She is also the author of several nonfiction children’s books.
Kelly works with schools and districts around the country to support educational leaders, coaches and teachers. Her emphasis is on developing literacy practices that help students become joyful and passionate readers and writers.
Dr. Jennifer Lempp is the author of Math Workshop: Five Steps to Implementing Guided Math, Learning Stations, Reflection, and More. This book is a practical resource meant to support teachers with strategies and structures to help create a learning environment where students are engaged in purposeful mathematics experiences.
Jennifer consults with schools and districts around the country, providing professional development on mathematics content and instructional practices. Additionally, she supports school leaders on the development of mathematics professional learning and school improvement plans.
Jennifer’s goal is to ensure all students have positive mathematics experiences and that teachers have the tools to support all students in the area of mathematics. You can follow Jennifer Lempp on Twitter @Lempp5 or Instagram @jennifer_lempp and learn more about her and her work on her website: mathworkshop.net.
Maria Nichols is a literacy consultant and Director of School Innovation for the San Diego Unified School District. A former elementary classroom teacher, Nichols received the Distinguished Elementary Educator Award from the San Diego chapter of Phi Delta Kappa, 2002.
Maria is the author of Comprehension Through Conversation and her latest book, Building Bigger Ideas: A Process for Teaching Purposeful Talk.
