In Search of The Thing

When I first started teaching, I was always looking for The Thing. The Thing that was going to help students to learn best. The Thing that would make the lesson stand out in students’ minds. The Thing that would be the right fit for all students. Don’t we all wish we could find that one magical Thing?

In my search for The Thing I used a number of different graphic organizers. I had my KWL charts for every science strand, Venn Diagrams at different points, and collaborative Sequence Charts, Mind Maps, Brainstorming, etc. As time went on, my collection of graphic organizers continued to grow and morph from chart paper to include digital apps. I think this is really where I started to think more about The Thing and what it’s purpose was for our community of learners. Were they something physical we needed to have? Did they need to be visual in the classroom all the time? Which ones could we display on the screen and put away to revisit for the next time?

Sometimes I wanted to do some collaborative brainstorming. Students would be able to learn with and from one another; building upon their ideas and practising collaboration skills. I thought The Thing for this particular goal would be graphic organizers such as Mind Maps where students could see the relationships between pieces of a certain idea, topic, word, etc. We could track our ideas together if I wanted to activate some prior knowledge, take the temperature of the class as a whole about a specific concept in science or social studies, or even to help develop a deeper understanding of vocabulary for word work.

Sometimes I wanted to create an anchor for us as a class. Perhaps we were engaging in shared reading and we wanted to keep track of our thoughts or the events in the text. We might use a sequence chart or a timeline so that we could remember what had happened, how we felt or thought about what was written, or even to reflect back on how our thinking and opinions had changed. These anchor charts needed to be displayed, continually revisited, and always turned out to be messy and imperfect for the first few drafts – we were adding things, changing things, there were arrows pointing from one idea to another, and it documented our thinking. In the final review of this collection of thoughts, events, and ideas we could organize a neat, final draft but I always felt it was necessary for students to see that thinking was a messy process, it didn’t need to be perfect the first time around – or even the second!

Students always seemed to like using Venn Diagrams. Maybe it was the fun circles or the visual appeal for them. Trying to extend our thinking and explore different visual models, we used three and four circles to push our thinking; we looked at a variety of funny venn diagrams to interpret the creators’ ideas and we tried to create fun ones ourselves. Venn diagrams became a way of playing with our ideas, sorting and re-sorting what we saw and understood to know that there were many different ways of knowing and that learning could change and be seen from different perspectives.

Sometimes I wanted to really focus in and see what students were thinking. We would use Concept Circles or a Frayer Model and have students demonstrate their thinking with words or without. This would give me the chance to help students communicate their ideas in a variety of ways – using manipulatives, drawings, sketches, images, etc. Seeing students express their thinking in different ways helped those who were still attaining language or vocabulary and it also helped me to be intentional as a teacher in seeing their thinking, asking them questions, and talking to them about their ideas.

These are all really Great Things to use with students, but they weren’t The Thing. They were tools for learning; a visual way to engage with student thinking and allow space for student learning to be valued in the classroom. One of the biggest lessons throughout my years of teaching has been that it’s rarely about The Thing. It wasn’t the graphic organizer that the kids loved – although they did enjoy watching me make spelling mistakes or sounding out tough words. Rather, it was engaging in real collaborative thinking and learning. The messy ideas, the moment to be learning with one another was The Thing. I used to think that just giving them a graphic organizer would be The Thing to do and sometimes it still is. But now I also think of it as an opportunity to engage in critical thinking, to allow students to speak and voice their ideas and allow space to celebrate when their ideas change and develop and mature. In the end, maybe that’s The Real Thing.