Words are maybe mankind’s greatest tools. They cause civilizations to rise and civilizations to fall. They bind people together in marriage. They are able to bring us great hope. They are able to bring us great despair. Words can heal. They can tear apart. When our children speak their first words, it is a benchmark moment in their lives. When we speak our last words on Earth, they are often remembered. One of the defining characteristics of humans is speech. AI can copy it, but human speech in contrast is authentic, powerful, defining. Speech often promotes an exchange of ideas.
To be clear, speech can be found in many forms. It can be sign language. It can be spoken. It can be written. It can be a hug, a glance, a gesture, or even the absence of language(the silent treatment is most definitely a form of speech). I will often tell people that I can hear what they aren’t telling me as loudly as what they are telling me with their words. One of the great arts of understanding speech is listening for what is left out.
Our classrooms need to have rich language interactions. And let me tell you, classrooms (based on test prep) likely don’t have those interactions. I can tell you from personal experience that common assessments(code for all schools are using that assessment), state assessments, and federal assessments are not representative of rich language. And if we believe that assessment drives instruction, why are we letting bland, short, lifeless, out of context excerpts drive our classroom instruction?
Take a moment and think about sitting around talking about your favorite topic. Think about how those conversations might sound. It might be based on storytelling. They might be interactions to learn how to do something. Those conversations might just be reconnecting. They might be comforting someone during at tough time. But I bet if you dig deep, you are going to find a litany of literary devices used in that discussion: alliteration, hyperbole, personification, metaphors/similes, varied sentence beginnings, voice, imagery, and onomatopoeia to name a few. Those interactions are usually filling and have significance.
We will talk about this more as the blog progresses, but I am a huge fan of books studies. I have already mentioned them in a post already. The conversations that we model as educators is important. If the conversation is boring for you, it probably is for your students. I like to develop a bank of questions for book studies that I can ask. Often I will have students turn to a partner and talk about what they think. When I do book studies I keep a set of post-it notes at each team table. When students see examples of great vocabulary, they write it down on the post-it, and we sticky it to the wall in our classroom or to a a bulletin board. I will also have different sections of the walls of my classroom dedicated to the aforementioned literary devices. If a student finds an example of these while we are reading, they put it on a post-it, and we add it to the categories marked on our wall. Got a great example of voice, add it!!!
But really, the most important thing is to have meaningful and enjoyable conversations. By the way, great conversations don’t just occur within the narrative context. They can occur with informational texts, poetry, persuasive texts(pick a fun topic), and you will only have to throttle the conversation back!0, and much more.
Here is an example of a text that we use from Langston Hughes, Mother to Son, and is found in the public domain:
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare;
But all the time
I’se been a’climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark,
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back;
Don’t you sit down on the steps,
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard;
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
This poem is beautiful unto itself. It is powerful. It sings those words from a place deep within a person’s soul. It grabs at the times in your life when you have had to pick yourself up by your bootstraps. And those little hands in feet sitting in your classrooms, they can relate.
It is important that students bring some direction to the discussion. Early in the year, your students may require more prompting. By mid-year, they may well be able to drive the entire conversation. And it is IMPORTANT to remember that the best conversations accompany complex texts. Here are some example questions that can be asked:
What questions did you have while reading this? (my personal favorite opener for discussion)
What did you find interesting about this poem?
What types of personal experiences did the writer maybe bring to this?
Who is the intended audience of this piece of poetry?
Provide some examples of metaphors.
What lesson(if any) is the writer trying to provide his reader?
How do you relate to this?
How do you think Langston Hughes would have read this aloud?
I wish you the best in having great, genuine conversations with your students. It will make you look forward to coming to work. It will make your students excited about coming to school.
Pro Tip: Rich conversations are also important to mathematics. In the past, I have had the honor of working with some truly great math teachers. As Alex Haley once noted, “If you see a turtle sitting on a fence post, you know it didn’t get there by itself.” That is me. Even that quote, I got from another great teacher. One of those teachers gave me the idea to have white boards cut for each team(30″ x 30″ roughly). Grab some washable white board markers, and you have a great presentation tool. Teams write down how they solved a particular problem -> they show their work! They would then stand up and explain their thought processes for solving the problems. Talk about great conversation! Discussions between other teams and within teams was powerful stuff. I have not delved into mathematics delivery quite yet. But this is a great start.
