MTV: What? So What? Now What? by Alison Yang

Sandra

2021-02-23 22:21:49 UTC

¨Making students' thinking visible serves a broader educational purpose as well, a purpose that goes beyond content to focus on the question: Who are our students becoming as thinkers and learners as a result of their time with us? This question speaks to a purpose of education beyond the test to a lifetime of learning, engagement, and action. It speaks to the very notion of identity.¨ P.23 4th paragraph. I chose this paragraph because it reflects very well the IB philosophy of lifelong learning, the learning that reminds after the teaching, activities and classroom instruction is over.It also made me think about my own role as a teacher in shaping their identify as thinkers and learners. The concept of identity is a major aspect in life and to think that we, as teachers, can influence this, is quite intimidating, challenging and rewarding at the same time. Who will my students be as a result of their time with me?!

Sandra

2021-02-23 22:47:37 UTC

In this video the routine that I think was used more powerfully was the questioning. The teacher comes to the group and acknowledges that students are having quite a lot to discuss as they try to solve the problems. She checks for understanding and reviews the process to solve the problem. Some students reveal that a couple of students did not say much so the teacher asks them questions to encourage participation, but still the boy does not say much. There are a few moments of insight and understanding by the students, which are illustrated by their "Ah! and Oh yeah! expressions. Another routine used is listening. Teacher asks questions and waits for students to answer. I think that 'documentation" occurs with the work itself. Students are solving a Maths problem and they have multiple sheets of paper where they have a trapezoid and they have to draw a rectangle to fit. As to the thinking routine, although the teacher does not ask the question WMYST, she prods the students with more questions until it is the students who figure out the problem and have the understanding.
The "Refining solutions" part of the video at minute 2:19 does not have any sound.

Lea

2021-02-25 00:49:03 UTC

"...deep learning and mastery of a domain arises not merely from acquisition of knowledge but rather from learning to think as people in that particular field think. This accomplished when mentors share the process of thinking with apprentices in such a way that the process of thinking becomes a core piece of learning." - p.24, line 4

I think this passage very well explained why "making thinking visible" matters. What is most important behind knowledge itself is how the knowledge is constructed, which is something that needs to be explicitly taught to students. It is almost impossible for teachers/students to teach/ learn every single piece of knowledge of a particular field in school, but the way of thinking and the connections behind can support students to become lifelong learners.

Lea

2021-02-25 01:08:40 UTC

Sandra's passage is a good reminder to me: teachers should always take a step back and examine the activity design or the lesson planning- what do we want students to learn at the moment? what worth working on in the limited class time? Another quote from Vygotsky in the later paragraph resonates with this passage "children grow into the intellectual life of those around them."

Sandra

2021-02-25 04:05:43 UTC

Yes, Lea. Your quote is very related to the ideas in my chosen paragraph and it goes deeper into the idea of the responsibility we teachers have towards the future identity of our students. We help shape their intellectual identity!

Lea

2021-02-26 07:21:45 UTC

In the first clip, Questioning was used powerfully to elicit students thinking process. When the teacher asked "why a rectangle?" she was asking the WMYST question. The first students couldn't explain very well but then the boy in green explained the reasons by connecting different clues after teacher's "reflective toss."
The teacher also did Listening well by showing interest to students answers and trying to understand students' perspectives. But I feel that the "educative listening" could have been practiced more when the teacher saw the students were confused. The teacher might have asked the clarification questions in an intimidating manner that made other quiet students maintain silent.
Documentation in both clips served its purpose to advance learning as it visualized the process of solving the math problem and helped facilitated student-student/ student teacher discussions. The group also built metacognitive awareness while discussing how the problem was solved.
I think the thinking that the teacher wanted to reinforce was to build explanations and interpretations. She always asked the students to explain how the get the answers and provide reasons about why they decided to solve the problem in that specific way.

Alison

alisonyangh — 2021-02-26 14:37:18 UTC

Sandra, your idea of helping every student shapes their learner identify resonates with me. This also aligns with Vygotsky's point quoted by Lea "children grow into the intellectual life of those around them". To me, this is education with equity and we have high expectations of every student in our class.

Alison

alisonyangh — 2021-02-26 14:41:51 UTC

Through the passages that you both have identified, it appears that we all agree the importance of developing lifelong learners by providing explicit strategies to guide students on how to construct knowledge.

Alison

alisonyangh — 2021-02-26 14:51:35 UTC

Questions for Lea and Sandar:

After reading the chapters and watching the videos, what do you find inspiration, encouragement, or insights into MTV practices that you want to incorporate into or strengthen in your teaching? What are you interested in understanding further?

Lea

2021-02-26 15:27:01 UTC

One thing I found inspiring and encouraging is to "judge my success by what is revealed about my students' thinking, not by how smoothly the lesson went." I will keep reminding myself to clearly explain the purpose of any thinking routine to students, so they don't take it simply as a task to be done. I would also like to practice asking questions that push students to elaborate their thinking (such as the WMYST type of questions). In some of my classes, I found it hard to engage everyone in a meaningful discussion (some always come up with irrelevant answers or short responses), so I am particularly interested in the routines for engaging with ideas in chapter 3, and how to incorporate these routines into a language acquisition classroom -- should we expect students, in the emergent stage and with small vocabulary, to discuss the conceptual questions in the target language?

Sandra

2021-02-26 15:58:30 UTC

I may have to disagree someow with you Alison. It seems to me quite the opposite. The teachers "bears" a lot of responsibility in the shaping of the students' intellectual or thinking identity, so from my passage, I meant to draw attention to the point that students and, maybe school community, have a high expectations of teachers as well...

Sandra

2021-02-26 16:03:07 UTC

Alison, before we think of that final point, what did you get from the video from the point of view of the 4 aspects of MTV? (Questioning, Listening, Documentation and Thinking Routines.)

Sandra

2021-02-26 16:20:11 UTC

Alison, the question is ¨HOW¨?
We regularly, though not successfully, try ways, as Lea stated. The question is, what strategies? How often, with what groups and, most importantly, how do we incorporate them into our subject content and teaching and engage our students in the process?

Sandra

2021-02-26 16:29:00 UTC

Lea, I do agree with you, both in terms of the teacher's role and the student's role. I think, this also shows how difficult it may be to practice the 4 aspects of the VT at once, and I know nobody is saying we should, but this is shows us how regularly we should practice then, in case, we really want to do so. I like that you mentioned the boy in green...he was the one who said little at the beginning and other students stated this, but I think, he said, quite a bit at the end! I was almost cheering for him.

Sandra

2021-02-27 01:06:42 UTC

In terms of the ¨Now What¨? I´d like to say that I will try to make an effort to ask more probing questions to my students in order to elicit more thinking from them, rather than asking them content questions where there is a right answer. I will also try to see if I can have spaces in my classroom where students can just doodle or jot notes. Perhaps I can come up with good questions related to the unit and put them on a board around the classroom throughout the unit and every time the students think they have an idea, they can write it down. I will also work on listening more carefully to my students, not just the to the superficial thoughts they may be expressing, but to the meaning behind them. I think we do well in terms of documenting the work as it is. Finally, I will aim at developing and using a few thinking routines to use in my class with my students. I do not know which ones these are now, but hope to get some good ideas by the time this course finishes.

Alison

alisonyangh — 2021-02-27 06:37:47 UTC

My takeaway from the reading and the video is that quality thinking requires practice and guidance. These thinking routines provide a structure, require teachers to model and allocate time for students to practice. Observing from the video, the teacher asks probing questions to help students further clarify their reasoning of the math problem, as apprentices. I'd like to continue refining my skills asking probing questions and most importantly, I would really like to increase my wait time to ensure sufficient time to construct their response. One observation is that the teacher moves a bit to facilitate the conversation. The non-verbal communication and movement is something teachers might forget sometimes. Having the conversation right next to the student or in front of the podium have different effect and demonstrate different degree of authority.

Alison

alisonyangh — 2021-02-27 06:38:33 UTC

Sandra, I am unsure which part that you disagree. Clarification: my thought of promoting thinking of every student is an indicator of teachers have high expectations of every student and believe the importance of engage students intellectually. It's not about what the school expects the teachers to perform. Rather, the role of education is to take students beyond content and develop their passion of lifelong learning. Very often, without intentional questioning, we see students are sitting with same people and only specific students are responding to the teachers' questions or prompt.

Alison

alisonyangh — 2021-02-27 06:59:39 UTC

Hi Sandra, the visible thinking routines can be the "How" we facilitate thinking. However, as the book indicated, MTV is an approach but than an learning activity. The author mentioned that when selecting the routine, it's important that teachers first identify what type of thinking that I'd like my students to demonstrate. "Documentation" for me is a great strategy that we create thinking culture in the classroom. Culture is abstract and we will need to make a deliberate effort to ensure the learning artifacts are collected and visible and they can serve as "data" point to guide conversation. I really like your idea to have a space for students to doogle or ask questions.

Lea

alisonyangh — 2021-02-27 07:08:06 UTC

Sandra

2021-02-28 00:40:49 UTC

I agree Alison. I think that the way I am documenting my units now are a starting point. I take pictures of student´s work, worksheets, posters, videos, oral presentation files, etc and put them in the planner along withe the activity or task I have set. In this way, they are preserved and can be used as samples. I also keep the best quality posters.