"What made that conversation good?"

The following chart was the result of a whole-class conversation about what made the book club conversation in the Teachers College video so good:

I later adapted the chart into a rubric that students would use to self-assess their book club conversations, and which I would use to evaluate and coach them.

Great video models of high-level student discussions

Here's the link to some videos from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project:

http://readingandwritingproject.com/resources/common-core-standards/ccs-videos.html

I used the fifth video on the page, which has this description:
Title: Book Club Conversation meeting Common Core expectations
Synopsis: A video of a fifth grade book club from PS 6 engaging in accountable talk around historical fiction at grade-level text complexity. You’ll notice their high level comprehension and interpretation of the text as they discuss theme, metaphors, symbolism, and move to speak across texts.

12/11/12 Think Sheet: Indicators of Success

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1.     What is the focus of your inquiry and why is this important to you?

What would it take to raise the level of discourse in students’ talk about reading? Students’ oral language development is hugely important, especially for my majority ELL student population. So often I see my kids simply retelling what they read when they talk with their peers about their reading, or engaging in “parallel talk” where they’re not really listening or engaging with each other. The quality of their ideas stays low, because they’re not working together to build stronger thinking. I was inspired by a video of a 5^th grade student book club from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, in which students were engaging with each other about the ideas in the book at an incredibly deep level.

2.     What classroom data are you planning to use for your routine data source to see how students are (or are not) progressing towards this goal? 

 Field notes and/or video from whole class discussions and book clubs.

3.     Take some time to look at the routine data source for 1-2 focal students.  What would indicate if a student was successful? What were you hoping to see? 

- Over the course of the discussion, students develop high-level ideas: students move beyond summarizing to higher levels of critical analysis

- Students stay on one idea, collectively building on and developing it

- Students embrace disagreement as a way to push their own thinking

- Students engage in the discussion with energy and enthusiasm

- Students consistently refer back to the text to provide support for their ideas

4.     At the end of the year what is the learning goalthat you would like your focal students to reach? 

Students will be able to engage in critical discourse with each other around texts

“The next steps I am going to take are  ….”

I'd like to use the chart that my students made after watching the video to create a rubric that we can use to assess discussions. It would be great to start using this rubric regularly after each whole-class discussion, and to have students ultimately use it to assess their book club discussions. I think it will be really powerful to have the rubric come out of the students' own observations.

12/10/12 Whole-Class Discussion Field Notes

Whole Class Discussion: The Tiger Rising

12/10/12

Field Notes

Me: How is Rob changing, based on what we just read?

Angel M: Before, he didn’t want to set the tiger free, but now he keeps asking questions of Willie Mae, and now he wants to set it free.

Alexxa: [signaling that she has something to add on] I forgot

Abel: He’s opening his suitcase little by little, especially when Sistine and Willie Mae are around.

Gerardo: I respectfully disagree with Abel’s idea. When Sistine said those words to him, he just closed up.

Abel: Well yeah, he closed his suitcase, but at the end he opened it a little more.

Nathalie: I predict that Sistine only said those words when he wasn’t going to let the tiger go, but if Rob lets the tiger go, she’ll be happy.

Cesar: I agree to Gerardo, and I have something to add on. Something to add on is that as soon as Rob opens the cage to the tiger, Sistine will be nice again.

Jesus: I also agree with Nathalie. Sistine said all of those words to Rob so he’d let the tiger go.

[“Quiet connection” signals all around the class]

Phu: Wait, I’m confused. Is Rob going to let the tiger go or not?

Notes:

Students are sticking with the same idea, and building on each other’s thoughts, though sometimes in a repetitive and round about way. By the end of the discussion, they had co-constructed a strong theory about why Sistine had acted so out of character. They didn’t use textual evidence to support their thoughts, and they didn’t address the initial question in any depth. Nobody brought up a significant moment when Rob did something that he had never done before. They were able to sustain the conversation with no facilitation from me.

Questions: What would it take for them to dig even deeper, pulling apart parts of the text that they’re skimming past right now? How can we make the discussion less repetitive, so that each person’s contribution really builds on the last?

A breakthrough, and a dilemma

After a month and a half of studying character analysis in fiction, and explicit teaching about high-level conversations about texts, my students had a real breakthrough this week. It started when I showed them a video from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project of fifth grade students in New York discussing "Bud, Not Buddy" in a student-led book club. My students were completely enthralled, and easily able to fill a sheet of chart paper afterward with a list of all the things the NYC kids did to make their discussion good. They especially loved how the students in the video stayed on one topic for a long time, and disagreed with each other in a heated way that was still respectful. It was so nice to get to show them such a clear example of where we're headed.

The next day, I taught a lesson on analyzing the recurring images and ideas in a text in order to better understand theme. Students were easily able to brainstorm a list of the recurring images in our class read aloud, "The Tiger Rising." I explained that those recurring images often symbolize something else, and asked them to think about what they might represent in "Tiger Rising." This led to a spontaneous whole-class discussion that was, hands down, the best I have ever heard them have. They were SO engaged, really listening and responding to each other, and sharing incredible ideas that led to this building excitement among all of them. At one point, one of my focal students got a huge grin on his face and jumped up and said, "The tiger is like Rob's feelings, and the cage is Rob keeping them all trapped inside....and Sistine has the key!!!!" The other students literally gasped. They didn't want to stop talking about it.

So they are definitely ready to begin book clubs. The problem is that our school's "Expo" is in several weeks, and the weeks before Expo are always completely consumed by getting ready for it. So it's going to be a tough time time to start book clubs.

This leaves me with a dilemma about my routine data source. I was planning that my data source would be regular video recordings of my focal students' book club, because I really want to capture the quality of the conversations that they're having on their own. I'm wondering what I could use in the meantime. The whole class discussions we have about the read aloud could work, though they're harder to document. I'd love ideas!

11/13/12: Reflections on focal student conversations; next steps

1. What are you thinking about right now for your area of inquiry?

I’m still really interested in raising the level of students’ talk about reading, but the inquiry feels a little stalled right now. I think that’s because the bulk of student talk currently happens in partner shares and during whole-class read aloud discussions. The next step is definitely to start up guided reading and book clubs—I think the talk around a shared text that happens in those groups will really enrich this inquiry. It will be interesting to compare the quality of students’ talk with their reading proficiency and growth; I wonder how much of a connection there will be.

2. What is one thing you learned when you had a conversation with your focal student(s)?

I learned that what I thought I was emphasizing in my instruction about talk about reading was not what my focal students were internalizing — at least not the only thing they were internalizing. Much of my instruction had been about how important it is to listen carefully to your partner’s idea and then build on it, really working together to develop a single idea instead of just taking turns reporting your thoughts. My students mostly talked about how it’s important to share the most important thing that happened in the parts you just read, that you should share for a long time, and that you should ask your partner lots of questions. They also talked a lot about checking for understanding and determining importance: telling your partner “specifically” what just happened, and identifying the most important details.

3. Did you find out what you were hoping to find out in the conversation?

I got a better sense of how students are thinking about partner shares; it prompted me to do much more teaching into how to develop big ideas and theories about the text (and about characters in particular), and how to use those theories to have deeper, more powerful partner conversations.

4. What do you want to know now?

I think I’m really ready to see how this all plays out in student-led book clubs with shared texts. I’m interested to see how my focal students (all ELLs reading below grade level) develop in their ability to talk about their reading, and how this growth might be related to their reading proficiency.

5. Where are you now in thinking about a repeating or routine data source?

I’m thinking of periodically video-recording my focal students’ book club, transcribing that video, and coding it for different conversational characteristics.

After group conversation:

What are you thinking now? What are your next steps for your inquiry?

It’s clear that it’s time to get these book clubs going. I think the first step will be to ask students what they would want their book clubs to look like: what would make them fun, interesting, and help them understand their books better?

Then I’d like to show them a video of a fifth grade book club from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project website. The students in the video are having a really sophisticated, analytical discussion about a book, and I’m interested to see what my students make of it. What do they notice about what the students in the video are doing? Are they inspired? Intimidated?

Finally, I’d like to jump into the book clubs, with lots of time built in for reflection about them, and fishbowls where different book clubs get time in the center of the circle as the rest of the class analyzes their discussion. At that point, it seems like the class might want to develop a rubric for what a good book club conversation would look like. Maybe this could then lead into regular self-assessment at the end of the discussions.

Conversations with focal students

My conversations with my focal students definitely illuminated some key gaps between what I hoped to communicate and what my students actually understood about what a good partner share in Reading Workshop looks like. For the past several weeks, I have been talking frequently with my students about how we "grow ideas" together: how when one person shares the seed of an idea about their reading, a good listener will hear that seed, and build on it, back and forth until the idea becomes well developed. I've stressed that a good conversation doesn't just involve people taking turns talking or retelling, that it should be a real dialogue, with both partners helping each other to develop big ideas. We've practice that in whole-class discussions as well as fishbowl discussions, with a small group in the middle talking and an outer circle observing.

But when I asked my focal students what a good partner share looks like, their responses surprised me. One student talked about how in a good partner share, both partners talk for a long time. He also mentioned that reading partners should ask each other specific questions about what happened in the book. Another student told me that reading partners should tell who the characters are and what happened — in other words, a basic retelling. None of the students talked about growing a big idea about a character, or about listening to their partner's idea and building on it: the two points I have been most focused on teaching in the past few weeks.

This makes me think that students' ideas about dialogue around reading are deeply entrenched, and that I will need to do even more explicit modeling and teaching in order to build students' understanding of what high-quality dialogue looks like. I'd be interested to do some contrastive analysis with students of two different conversations: one focused on partners retelling and asking clarifying questions, and one in which partners have a back-and-forth that results in higher-level analysis. I think I should also involve students in creating a rubric for discussions about reading: we could use the same rubric for students to self assess their conversations with partners, in book clubs, and in whole class discussions.