Instead of an article, students were responding to the video above, doing their "note taking" on the back channel. I also switched out Agree, Disagree, and Aspire to for more textual focus:
- connections to the memoir
- connections to their own lives (including friends/family)
- connections to other texts
I split the class into groups of four and five, though in retrospect it should have been groups of three, as there was still room for students to tune out in the groups of five, and it would have been useful for everyone to have to take a turn with this group.
I also should have done more scaffolding of what the silent reflection time should look like, and I wonder if silent reflection can (or should?) include writing to keep them focused on the subject at hand. I do know now that I need to specify that silent reflection does not involve touching each other or playing with whatever is in front of them. I felt they were distracting themselves instead of spending the silence to reflect.
We used the Backchannel at the conference for one of the sessions. I thought it was very interesting, as it allows for those "side conversations" without disrupting everyone. I can understand your troubles you have with your group and the "silent" part :)
ReplyDeleteI had issues with students not fidgeting or playing with materials or writing notes or trying to read books during the silent time. There was a distinct misunderstanding of what to do when silent or thinking about what has been said. They could not stand not multitasking.
ReplyDeleteHowever, their responses were often shallow and definitely reflected the lack of thought or reflection during the silence.
I think one of the components of the "silent time" is to allow for students to write down comments or questions that they have about what their classmate has said. The theme has arisen in everyone's blogs thus far that we need to "train" (in essence) our students on how to utilize the silent time. Silence IS awkward. We are programmed to respond immediately often with little to no thought. In the future, I want to amend the rules to "Save the Last Word" so that when a student is done speaking, the remainder of the time writing down comments, questions or responses in general to what their classmate has said. This allows for them to construct their responses in thought rather than blurting out an initial reaction. I think this will keep them from "forgetting" what they wanted to say...but will still allow them to respond and communicate with one another. Maybe this will put the focus on the thought and reflection that we all set out to achieve?
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