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.
----------------
Thanks Again Emily!
No comments:
Post a Comment