Good evening everyone... I had the opportunity this morning to do a demonstration lesson for a long term substitute teacher in first grade today. The teacher has a group full of very strong readers and was asking me some questions about "rigor" and what to do to keep challenging these kiddos. I thought that here was an opportunity for me to help out a newer teacher AND play around with Ellin's ideas about rigor and teaching the nature of understanding. My colleague wanted to know about how to teach inferences. Most of these little people had some experience with making inferences in Kindergarten and so I decided to combine modeling inferences with teaching about the dimensions and outcomes of understanding in first grade. Sounds like a lot for little people, but I was curious to see how far I could take them in just one hour's time. I decided I wanted to model inferences using Eve Bunting's Fly Away Home. I created a three column chart headed with the equation (and clip art pictures) for making inferences: Text clues + Schema = Inferences. There was a column each for text clues, schema and inferences. Then I had a second large sheet of paper about one yard by one yard, with a spiral filling the page. Under the spiral I wrote "What is happening to our understanding..." I started the lesson by building anticipation...telling the kids that I was sharing a really wonderful book that truly changed my thinking and changed ME! I explained that for a book to change you, you had to understand it very deeply and very well and that I was going to show them how I went about understanding deeply. Before I read, I looked at the front cover and the title and inferred that the author wanted us to learn about how sad it was to say good bye when someone is leaving. (I drew attention to the sad father and son on the front cover, talked about how I had schema for saying goodbye to people at the airport and so I inferred that someone's family was leaving and flying home.) I wrote the text clues, schema and inference on the three column chart and then started writing my original understanding in the center of the spiral working out. (and yes, I wrote upside down and around and around, to the fascination of the six and seven year olds--and my colleague--- in the room). I continued to read and make inferences...but here is where I tried something new for me. I decided I wanted to model what it meant to "Dwell in ideas---both silent thinking time and a chance to talk with someone and talk through my ideas" When I would write down my inferences on the three column chart...sometimes I would stop...and thank them for being so quiet while I spent some extra quiet time really thinking about my idea... and then I would add to my inference and make it deeper. Then I would move over to the spiral and in a different color and at a 90 degree angle to my original thinking I would write what I did to help me understand---taking quiet time to dwell in my ideas as I made inferences.Then I would resume in my original color in the spiral and write my new understanding of the book- for example I might say "Now I think this book is about how hard it is to be homeless!" If you know the book, you'll remember that part where the boy finds a bird trapped in the airport and wishes for the bird to finally escape. I expressed some confusion here...what does this bird have to do with being homeless? I modeled some initial lower level inferences here at first... the boy wishes the bird will get out to his home, or maybe the boy likes animals and wants the bird to live. Then I modeled "dwelling in an idea" and asked for quiet while I thought. I waited a good long time and then said...now I am thinking that the bird was happy to get out of the airport, but said I still wasn't sure if I was getting it. The kids were just about jumping out of their skin with ideas here but instead of letting them call out ideas, I let them turn and talk. After a bit of time with their partners, I brought their attention back and I mentioned that I thought the kids could help me find another way to understand this part of the book... So I called on a little girl named Lunden. God bless her, she didn't have her hand up, but I had a feeling she might be able to help me out. I asked Lunden to tell me what she thought about the bird part and Lunden, after a long moment said "The bird was flying home which was away from the airport. The boy wishes he could get out of the airport and live somewhere else too!" So here I said, "Wow, Lunden, you have made me think about how the bird and the boy was the same! They both want to get out of living in the airport and Maybe the author is trying to tell us that there is hope and someday the boy and his dad will have a home just like the bird got back to his home." I asked the kids to turn and talk and tell each other what Lunden and I did to understand...and then we added to our spiral a new aspect of understanding: talking with a friend (again in a different color and in a 90 degree angle to the rest of the writing). Then I wrote what we now thought the book was about--a final discussion of what I believed the central themes of the book to be. I talked about how this book had changed me...how it made me realize how homeless people really didn't want to be homeless, how hard it was to be homeless (just like it was really hard for the bird to escape the airport) and that it must be so lonely to go through life trying not to be noticed, and how it might make them feel angry sometimes that there life was so hard. I said how I wanted to do something to help homeless people and talked about how I volunteer at our church shelter to do laundry and cook food for some families without a home...I shared how the ideas in this book were powerful for me. The kids, who were starting to get a little wiggly by this time got suddenly quiet. I think this was a really new idea for them...that you would read something and it would make you want to go out and DO something. To end the lesson, I asked the kids to talk with a partner about what they learned about understanding a book deeply---what could they do with the next book they read to understand it in such a way that the author might change us. They then wrote their ideas on a half sheet of paper (an exit slip). As they were writing, I cut out the spiral and as closure, I held it up with the tiny part of the spiral at the top and the large part of the spiral---where our thinking ended at the bottom. We looked at how our thinking grew...spread out...because of the inferences we made and because of how we were dwelling in ideas---through quiet time and through talking with a friend. I was thrilled that these little people sat still and followed and hour long lesson and even more thrilled that the vast majority of them wrote something that showed understanding of what it means to understand. There are some things I would do differently next time... stiffer paper for the spiral...maybe some more attention to where the inferences came from (the equation Schema + Text clues = Inference) but I was pleased overall at my first attempt to teach the nature of understanding to very little people. Just thought I would share that I tried out the spiral. As I think of it, by doing the spiral, I was modeling how my thinking changed (synthesis) as a result of the dimensions of understanding. The changes in my thinking...wasn't this a product and the dimensions of understanding (the dwelling in ideas) the process? Sorry so long Jennifer
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