Teacher Learning Community

Fall 2018 TLC: Empowering Student Thinking - Activity 1 Anchor Resources

Course leader:
SEED Team

Teacher Quality Standards

  • QS I: Teachers demonstrate mastery of and pedagogical expertise in the content they teach.
    • Element C: Teachers demonstrate knowledge of the content, central concepts, inquiry, appropriate evidence-based instructional practices, and specialized characteristics of the disciplines being taught.
  • QS III: Teachers plan and deliver effective instruction and create an environment that facilitates learning for their students.
    • Element D: Teachers establish and communicate high expectations and use processes to support the development of critical-thinking and problem-solving skills.
    • Element E: Teachers provide students with opportunities to work in teams and develop leadership.

Creating a Culture of Learning in a Social Context

 In order for students to be empowered partners in thinking and learning experiences, a classroom culture that facilitates collaboration and communication, as well as one that places value on reflection, taking academic risks and thinking metacognitively about learning, are important conditions which must exist.  In this activity, you will examine how your developing classroom culture does or does not foster this type of discourse and thinking and examine resources to help you strengthen your practices in this area.

The resources in this set focus on building a culture of collaboration and communication within the classroom.

Resources

How Rich is Your Classroom Discourse?

This article provides the reader with a way to self-assess and improve the quality of classroom discourse.  

 

Strategies for Student-Centered Discussion

This video provides a classroom example showing teacher Sarah Brown Wessling setting up a classroom discussion. In addition to the classroom excerpts, a glimpse into the teacher’s thinking about the discussion is shown.

 

Four Steps to Structured Student Conversations

This post provides some tips to beginning with the use of structured conversations.  Specific strategies are listed.

 

The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies

This post provides a list of discussion strategies complete with links to videos showing classroom examples of each strategy.

 

Think Time and Collaborative Learning

 

In this classroom example, elementary students are shown using individual think time to prepare for a more collaborative sharing and discussion experience.