This I believe: If we are to have a hand in a future peace, we must not teach to only transform children’s way of being right now when they are under our care, but we must always teach towards Forever- when they have long since passed for the last time through our classroom doors and into the world.
Plan for Forever? Affect what children do, not only on the weekends, but how they handle themselves at a corporate meeting? That’s a tall bill. We’re used to planning for next week, next month. Some of us plan on a yearly scale. But how do we plan for Forever, so that what we teach isn’t just a teeny blip on a child’s life radar? Here are some key words I test against my teaching points and lessons:
· Transparency- do children easily see why we are doing this?
· Relevance- how will this help children outside the walls of this classroom?
· Applicability- is how I’m teaching this idea going to apply to later life in a meaningful, useful way?
Teaching children to talk well fits all of the above descriptions. I emphasize “teaching” because it is not enough to just provide time for talk. I emphasize “well” because it is not enough to teach them to have conversations that never touch their hearts or that do not open their mind to other ways of thinking and feeling.
I’d like to describe a construct that we can use in our classrooms every day. As important as independent reading, conferencing, and reading aloud, I hope you can make room in your schedule for the conversation circle. Before I outline the conversation circle, let me try to divide up who the credit belongs to, because it certainly isn’t me! Pieces of the conversation circle come from the idea of the interactive read aloud or read aloud with accountable talk. The IRA is commonly studied and written about at Teacher’s College and in their many books, as well as all over the country. It’s hard to know who to give the credit to for that part of it. The idea of holding a student-run book conversation (not quite a book club, though) was introduced to me by a workshop at our district, which was basically a snapshot of an entire course at a local college called Teaching Readers to Think.
The conversation circle is really just a discussion that follows after a regular interactive read aloud. It is a totally student-run conversation about the book and its bigger themes and implications.
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An activity that we did before staring conversation circles was to fishbowl
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Keeping in mind that a well-run conversation circle is an involved process and could stretch over a few days, depending on your schedule, here's how a typical one goes:
Read Aloud with modeling
Teacher reads aloud the book, stopping at pre-planned spots to model a specific strategy in a “think aloud” manner.
Read Aloud with partner talk
Teacher continues reading aloud, but after modeling in two or three spots, now releases some of the responsibility by asking reading partners to turn and talk in 2 or 3 pre-planned spots. In this way, they can attempt the same strategy that was just modeled in a controlled environment—the teacher has chosen a place where success is probable, the students get to hear another person’s thoughts, and they are not yet left to deciding when to use the strategy.
Conversation Circle
When the book is finished, the teacher asks children to take their places in the conversation circle. I find that it is helpful to have assigned spots because our space is tight and because quiet children are more likely to not offer up ideas if they are surrounded by others who are doing the same thing. Once the children are in the circle, my ritual is to say, “Who would like to start?” I usually choose a child who tends to listen more than talk. That child starts, and then here comes the fun part- you just let ‘em fly!
That’s right—no interrupting! I’ve found that it’s difficult to not interrupt at all. So I try my very hardest to contribute to the conversation as much as my fair share allows. If I were a kid in the class, how much would it be fair for me to add in my thoughts? (It usually amounts to me getting to say about 1 – 3 short comments.) That’s as much air space as I get to have—just what everyone else has. When I do talk, I go along with their topics. I don’t offer up anything about the conversation itself.
You’re probably wondering—what do they talk about? The book, of course! There’s no need to prompt them more than that. Trust me, they have thoughts about the book and they’ve had many conversations in their lives. Unknowingly, you have already taught them what to talk about when you modeled your thinking and they practiced on each other in the interactive read aloud portion. You’ve also already taught them how to talk enthusiastically about books if you talk enthusiastically about books every day.
Don’t expect them to strategy-speak. If they do that, you might want to worry a little—do they honestly think real readers talk like that? Sure, the strategies play their part. A child here and there will surely mention that they had such a good mental image when… or they inferred something because…, but they are more likely to say “I could really picture it when,” and “I thought that because.” Because this is about getting caught up in authentic talk. It’s a time reserved not for teacher talk- we get to talk a whole lot during the day. Children quickly realize that the conversation circle is theirs.
OK. So you did the first part—you let ‘em fly. And Michael talked, and then Rosie added something, and then Michael talked, and then Cara brought up something really controversia,l and Ernie said, “But…”, and then Michael cleared up the misunderstanding. And it goes on like this until you can’t bear to listen anymore. Surely this warrants an interruption?
Nope.
The conversation circle is theirs. Transparency, relevance, applicability. Why have a time for student talk if the teacher is going to—like every other minute of the school day—take up the baton and lead the orchestra? This isn’t our show, it’s theirs. Certainly this first conversation (and I guarantee the same goes for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc…) doesn’t sound like a world-changing peace mission. But a first grade reader on the first day of school also doesn’t sound like a first grade reader on the 100th day of school. This is part of their learning, and the negotiation is EVERYTHING.
The negotiation between voices is everything—I think it bears repeating. If we are teaching with Forever in mind, then we need to let them struggle. We need to let them feel what an unsatisfying conversation feels like. We need to let the listeners observe while the leaders say everything they were going to say—but not the one really important idea that they were thinking the whole time. We need to let the conversation end with a big, fat period and some silent reflection time. We need to cheerily say, “Well? How’d it go?” And let them consider that question.
Reflection
So here’s the part we love as teachers. Here’s where you can put in your two cents- a little bit. This reflection is about 3-5 minutes of wrap up after the book conversation for children to discuss how the conversation itself went and what a good goal would be for the next conversation. I only really have one rule for this time, and that’s “no names.” Because, if so- poor Michael. In this reflection time, I do take on a bit more of a heavy hand. I allow them to lead in terms of listing things that went well and things that did not. But when it comes to choosing a goal, I want to be sure that the group is moving in a direction that is both attainable and helpful. Usually, it’s pretty obvious. And often, it’s the same goal- day after day after day. Below are some goals, but I would imagine that it would really depend on the chemistry of your class which ones are “popular” with a given group. You can tell what the chemistry of my group was just by reading them.
· Leaving a space between comments to ensure the speaker is finished (we called these bubbles)
· Dropping out if more than one person is trying to speak and you’ve already had a chance (we called that being a hero)
· Dropping out if more than one person is trying to speak and you are a common contributor- even if you haven’t talked yet this session
· Dropping out if more than one person is trying to speak and the other person is a “listener” (we distinguished between listeners and leaders)
· Using your body language or an intake of breath to show you want to talk, especially if you’re a listener
· Watching out for listeners who look like they might want to say something
· Limiting your overall number of talking “turns” (Note: they wanted to make a number rule to solve this problem, but I vetoed that decision, using the excuse that grown-ups don’t have a number of times they can talk.)
· Sticking with an idea until it is well-explored
· Choosing bigger ideas over littler ideas to lead to a satisfying conversation (one time they spent 7 painful minutes debating something about the publish date)
· Rephrasing other’s thoughts in your own words, so that you and others can better understand (we used the frame, “So are you saying…?”)
· Disagreeing in a way that recognizes the other party
· Having something at least slightly new to add
· Avoiding “monologuing” (we used an observation of an adult book club to attempt this one- we noticed that they “ping-ponged” very fast… no one even got so bored they rolled onto their backs!)
For a few years, I was pretty proud of how our conversations operated. The kids ran it, they questioned each other when they didn’t understand, and they asked presenters to tell more. But except for every once in a while (what Ellin Keene calls a “happy accident”), those conversations weren’t the kind of conversation that no one in the circle wanted to walk away from because it was so mesmerizing. Like Keene says in To Understand, “if they can do it some days, why not every day?” And I had that exact experience with student-run conversations before trying the book conversation circle. They could do it some days, but it didn’t satisfy me because all the days in between they ran through the motions, impressing whatever adult popped in my room- but not fooling me.
But that was B.C.C. And this is A.C.C. Almost as soon as we started, I could tell that these conversations were different. Yes- they weren’t world changing. But the kid’s faces were riveted. They didn’t want the conversation to stop. Why? I can’t believe I didn’t see it before!
B.C.C., what motivation does a non-sharer have to clarify, add on, and question? Maybe they don’t really care that Jill had a table of contents revelation. They weren’t there; they didn’t have the revelation. But now- A.C.C., what motivation do they have to clarify, add on, and question? Well, every motivation! The conversation now is unquestionably everyone’s. The ideas are everyone’s ideas. Even the most brilliant idea—well, now it’s not Jill’s. It’s part Jill’s, part Ernie’s, part Cara’s, and even though we wish he’d zip it enough to hear his month click shut, part Michael’s. Once they’d learned how good it feels to be a part of a satisfying conversation, guess what? Again, I can’t believe I didn’t see this before! Our reader’s workshop share sessions magically improved. A social studies reflection circle had a few children in tears of empathy. Science experiment discussions deepened. I began keeping my mouth shut any time I sensed they could do a better job than me, which was most of the time. Virtually every other part of our day was enhanced in a really big way.
So here’s my take away point; it’s one that I am just learning myself:
The peace mission isn’t only realized in the actual ideas children have about the book. Yes, it’s true that good books provide a just right setting (our classroom) and cast of characters (the kids) for important ideas about life to flourish. Yes, their words are significant: they are wrestling with ideas about humanity. But, there’s something more elusive and more world-changing than the content of the conversation. And it’s this: The future of our world shifts ever so slightly toward peace every time we teach a child how to exist in the delicate balance between deference and assertiveness, leading and listening, give and take.
We’ll surpass the original skills and strategies we set out to teach: in fact, we’ll blow them out of the water. And… we get to save the world at the same time. Not a bad deal.
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