My feelings about the thinking and note-taking routines we’ve been looking at and using are…mixed. I feel like they’re useful for students who need reminding and encouragement to do the kinds of thinking many of these routines include—the parts about questioning the author, challenging his ideas, or even, for some students, making connections to their own lives. A lot of students need that kind of structure. On the other hand, though, going through these routines myself has been a triumph of will: my natural aversion to fitting my thoughts into someone else’s structure and my dislike of having to prove that I’ve thought about something compete against the legitimate good such thinking routines have done for my own critical reading skills.
That said, in going through the various routines we have looked at, one stood out to me more than the others, and that I would be more likely to assign to students. My favorite has probably been the 4 C’s (Connections, Challenges, Concepts, and Changes). I feel like this one has all the components I’d like my students to think about when reading or reacting to something. I especially like the Concepts and Changes sections. Concepts allows students to just write down the important ideas in what they’ve read, which will feel like normal note-taking to them. Changes is a place to help them look at the implications of the ideas they’ve been learning about and what the author’s intent might be. As much as I like that this strategy asks students to challenge and ask questions about the text, I especially love that it asks them to think about the ideas holistically. I can see using this routine in reading a story, to help them delve deeper into the ideas presented, or an informational (especially argumentative) text to help them consider what the ideas presented actually entail.
Dory,
ReplyDeleteI can totally identify with your mixed feelings regarding thinking routines. I almost feel hindered when I'm asked to use a thinking routine throughout my reading. I can totally see how it might be beneficial for struggling readers. Do you think you might use them with the reading class that you're interning in? I thought about them in relationship to the students I work with in my internship. I think a thinking routine could be effective with the freshmen, but the seniors may not buy in to it. Do you think the age/skill level could determine the implementation of these thinking routines?
You both raise excellent questions! I think it's important to keep in mind that the thinking routine itself is not the point. Rather, the idea is to help students internalize ways to productively consider new ideas, synthesize information, and question. I think much of the frustration you are experiencing relates to the fact that you have already internalized these routines -- you are expert thinkers in many ways. Our young students, however, often have not had the practice or instruction to develop these capacities. But when they have (perhaps in the case of some seniors) then I think we can let go of the thinking routines because they are not necessary.
ReplyDelete