Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Unison Reading - Following In

In the upcoming weeks, I'll be visiting Learning Cultures classes to evaluate Unison Reading groups and all classes to evaluate conferences.  I've asked Emily to be a guest blogger today on the concept of Following In, a key instructional tool for both of these formats.  Thanks Emily!!



Follow-in, Joint Attention, Cooperative Reasoning and the development of Joint Intentions
by Emily Jarrell

When my son was just around one, he was using a few key words but they were “baby” words – nana for bottle, dada for all people, mama for me.  I hung on every word he said.  I remember so clearly the spring in the apartment complex we lived in at the time because we had cherry trees in our front yard.  One early Spring day, enjoying a post-hybernation day outdoors, Aydan and I were standing in the front yard and he was pointing emphatically at the cherry blossom tree.  I walked him over to the tree and he wanted nothing more than to touch that tree and to grad the blossoms in his small fists.  It was a moment worth remembering because we were both completely engaged by this tree and both of us were giving this tree our undivided attention.  While Aydan was grabbing the blossoms, I said, “Tree! That’s a tree.”  Aydan continued to touch and grab the tree and I continued to say, “Yes, tree! That’s a tree.”  Needless to say, as I would not be going on about this if this didn’t happen, Aydan said, “Chee.” I responded with immediate excitement and said, “Yes, that’s right.  That’s a tree.  Do you like the tree? It’s so pretty!”  Aydan and I were speaking to one another.  We had a dialogue around the tree. 

If you don’t have children, I’m sure you’re sitting there reading this and thinking, “Seriously?”.  But, what I’m trying to illustrate here is the hard-wired nature of human beings to learn new things when in a situation where there is joint attention – when the parties are all looking at the same thing and trying to make sense of that same thing.  I’m also trying to illustrate the hard-wired nature of humans to make qualitative and quantitative leaps in their understanding of the world around them when they are attending to something – selecting to attend to that something – and someone follows-in to their attention to name, direct, push, and challenge them.  It is in the moment of acting upon the world, that learning is so easy and possible. 

So, what does this mean for us, Learning Cultures teachers? It means that WE DO TEACH!!!!! But, instead of traditional, transmission instructional models, we put our students into the action – through UR, Learning Groups, Table Shares, by illustrating their strengths and needs in their work in conferences – and then we FOLLOW-IN.  We base our strongest instruction in the moments when our students are looking at the same thing, trying to figure that thing out, intentionally formulating problems and trying to determine best means of action to solve those problems.  It’s in those moments that we turn to them and say, “Can I suggest something here?” or “Can I teach you something new?” or “Well, that work you’re trying to do is in the standards, let’s take a look together to see if we can figure this out.”

But, here’s the challenging tension.  WE DO TEACH but WE FIRST NEED TO FOSTER INTENTIONALITY in our students.  In Unison Reading, we need to hold them to the rules and BREACH when we know they don’t fully understand.  We need to hold them to breaching so that they begin to see what they don’t know, they begin to STOP taking their own understandings for granted and INSTEAD BEGIN TO QUESTION.  Once they begin to be curious, to be inquisitive.  Then we teach them to cooperatively reason.  We teach them to tell each other their thinking – “I’m thinking that maybe….” or “What about…?” or “Maybe it’s….” AND THEN we teach them to respond authentically – “Do you get what _______ said? Well, tell him you need him to resay it” and “________said something, he put an idea on the table, you all need to respond.  You can’t just sit and stare!” and “He said __________, now tell him what you think.” 

Once they have joint attention and they are cooperatively reasoning…the magic mix is there.  They will go back and forth naturally.  And you will have opportunity after opportunity to help them close their breaches by giving them the precise terminology to describe their processes, or to describe their new insights and you will be able to easily say, “Can I say something here? Can I teach you something new?”  This is where joint intentions begin.  They will be curious, they will be focused, they will be trying to reason, and you will help push them to new levels. 

So, push.  Push them to speak up every time there is something in that text that you know they should not take for granted.  Stop them and say, “Wait, I know this word is hard.  This is a good place to stop to get smarter.” Or, “Wait, there’s a symbol here and I’m not sure that you all understand what the symbol really means.  Use this opportunity to discuss this together.  This is how you will learn.”  Then TEACH them to cooperatively reason. And FINALLY, follow-in with instruction that will stick.  And, I promise, it will stick so much more if it’s done in this way.  And, if your follow-in is succinct and clear, they will want to pursue more from where your instruction came from – the standards. 



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Thanks Again Emily!


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