By Kari Thierer
It’s back to school time and that means thinking about how you will work with your students to develop the culture of your classroom. All classrooms have a culture – it is something that can and should be carefully cultivated to establish your space as a thoughtful learning community. Just like with adult work, this classroom culture takes some intentional time and planning, and I guarantee that the time invested in the beginning of the year will have long-term payouts later on. Below are my suggestions for the top five protocols to incorporate at the beginning of the school year to begin to establish a collaborative and reflective culture.
Attributes of a Learning Community
Students should have input in the development of their learning community and the agreements that help make an effective and safe learning space. Before I begin developing agreements, I often start my classes using the guiding questions from Attributes of a Learning Community and adapt them for the grade level I’m teaching. I’ll have students do some silent writing/reflecting, then working in pairs and quads to talk about what they’ve written. We do a share out of common elements that make a learning community an inclusive space and use this as the groundwork for our community agreements. An additional bonus is this activity gives me insight into past experiences of the students I’m working with and helps me understand where they’ve found success.
Compass Points
I am a big fan of collaborative group work in my teaching, whether it is face-to-face or online. I will often facilitate Compass Points early in the year as a way to establish some shared understanding about how groups function, and to create some common language that empowers students to ask for what they need in order to be successful in groups, and in the class as a whole. When using with K-12 students, I will adapt the questions that I ask the groups to reflect on and will use the adapted Compass Points protocol for youth (linked above). When done at the beginning of the year, students can develop some shared connections with others who may process information in similar ways, and begin to understand that others learn, work and process in ways that may be different from their own process. This helps later on in the year when we continue to collaborate both formally in group work, and informally in class work.
Connections/Clearings
Early in the year, I like to establish some formal process for connecting. I usually do not do this each day, but for sure will do an opening Connections at the beginning of the week to make space for things that may be on students minds from outside of the classroom. I may also close out a week with a modified Connections, often called Clearings, where I ask students to reflect on the week. This helps me get a read of what’s happening, as well as establishing our classroom as a space where students can bring their whole selves. It helps students hear from one another as well. In the beginning, I may go in a round, rather than letting student’s popcorn their responses, as a way to make sure everyone knows they have an opportunity to talk and they can pass. I may also give a guided question that requires a one-word answer or gesture response- for example, how are you feeling today – and then provide three or four answers for them to choose from or ask them to respond with a thumbs up, thumbs down, or thumbs neutral. As the class gets more practice, then we may move into more open connections that are timed, allowing students to share what they want to share without the expectation that they all must share.
Success Analysis
This is one of my very favorite protocols. In schools, we tend to focus on areas of improvement, without stopping to evaluate and celebrate success. At the beginning of the year, I will introduce the Success Analysis protocol to show that we can learn and grow by sharing our successes. I’ll ask students to think about a piece of classwork from the previous year (or term) that they were really proud of and think they did a good job completing. That will be the basis of the Success Analysis and students will follow the protocol in triads. As we end this process, I will ask students to think about a goal they have for the upcoming year/class and do some goal setting/reflective writing. Throughout the year (or course), I will return to the Success Analysis to highlight different opportunities for learning, for example, at the end of a big project as a way for students to reflect on the project and things they did well, followed again by some goal setting for future work they will be completing. Finally, at the end of the year or quarter, we return to the Success Analysis to celebrate the completion of the year/course.
Save the Last Word
I introduce text protocols very early in the year to help develop some routines for discussion. I like to start with the Save the Last Word (or Final Word) protocols first, because they help establish a few ways of engaging with text – identifying sections to discuss, followed by a process for that discussion. Once students are familiar with the protocol, we may adapt for different types of discussion, but they have the basic framework for following a process. I will use these protocols even in courses that do not utilize a lot of text in a traditional way – for example, I may use the protocol with the text analysis of assignment instructions as a way for students to decode and fully understand the assignment parameters. Or we may watch a TEDTalk and we’ll use the video as the ‘text’ for our discussion in small groups.
I strongly believe that utilizing protocols in
the classroom is a great way to create a culture of reflection and
collaboration. All protocols can be adapted for use with students from
Kindergarten to College, with some adjustments of language and timing. Have you
used protocols in your classroom? Please share with the SRI community by posting
in our Facebook group or on Twitter. Have questions? Feel free to reach out to
Kari (karithierer@gmail.com). Have a great school
year!
