Differentiating Thinking Routines

This year at Chapman, we do not have monthly staff meetings. Instead, our administration has put us in groups of about 10 teachers that cover almost every teaching area here at Chapman. These groups have been given the freedom to examine our own pedagogy and collaboratively develop topics of study that will benefit all of the teachers in our groups.

 The group of teachers that I am facilitating has identified the following through-line questions that will guide our professional development this year:



One concern around thinking routines and the culture of enrichment that we have heard a lot is the feeling that thinking routines often rely on communication (or other) skills that not all of our students possess. For our November meeting, our group focused on ways of differentiating thinking routines to increase the inclusion of all learners.

Each educator in the group focused on one student who they often find themselves differentiating for (a student who is gifted, a student with a disability, a student learning English for their first time, etc.). As we watched video examples of thinking routines, each educator identified difficulties that the thinking routine might present their students.

The entire group then worked collaboratively to brainstorm ways to differentiate the thinking routine so that all of the concerns brought up for each individual student were addressed. I am taking the different possibilities for differentiation and formatting them into documents that can be available to other educators. Check out our document for how to differentiate See-Think-Wonder below!



These documents, as well as other resources for creating a culture of thinking, will be available on my Weebly, www.acescultureofthinking.weebly.com. 

The Failure Bow!

“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” - Denis Waitley

This past week I decided to gather 5th grade students' current thoughts on failure. I asked each student to pick a color, a symbol, and an image that they feels represents failure. 

Check out the results from students in Mrs. Kalix's 5th grade class:

How do we change students’ negative associations with the word “failure” and help them learn to embrace, learn from, and persevere through failures?

 One of many ways that we will be using in art this year is...

 THE FAILURE BOW!

Students spent 15 minutes coming up with an imaginary failure, such as making a PB&J using hair gel instead of jelly, and drawing an artwork of their failure.

 Students then took turns presenting their epic failure to the class. The class then responded to each presented failure with a celebratory cheer. The presenter then did an elaborate bow in response to the cheering audience.

The failure bow helps students create a new relationship with what we think of as failure. When we fail, it often means we were pushing ourselves to take risks and develop new skills. Our so-called failures can lead us to possibilities we never would have imagined.

That is worth celebrating!

What's next?

5th grade's next project will focus on failures and building new relationships with what we think of as a failure.

Stay tuned to see the students' colors, symbols, and images that they choose to represent failure after their project is finished!

Thinking Routine Helps Students Process Hurricane Matthew

Earlier this month, the devastation of Hurricane Matthew was on every news channel and I noticed that in nearly every art class, the hurricane was the topic of many of the curious questions, conversations, and expressions of concern. This made me decide to sit down and do a thinking routine (Claim-Support With Evidence) with the students as a way to discuss the impact of Hurricane Matthew and use artmaking to process the devastation that many are facing.

The lesson started with a discussion about a photograph of a boy standing among Hurricane Matthew's aftermath in Haiti. I showed the students the picture one section at a time, each time having them take 2 minutes to silently look and investigate the picture, then respond with a claim of what they think is going on in the picture and support that claim with evidence that they see.

After the exploration of the picture, students asked many questions about Hurricane Matthew and the country of Haiti, so we explored the facts. One student asked why our news channels only talked about the impact of Hurricane Matthew on Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina rather than Haiti, so students discussed possible answers to this question for quite some time.

After the discussion, students were told that we would spend the rest of the art class creating something, real or imaginary, that would help the people of Haiti.

Check out the conversation and a few of the students' artworks below!