Keep Moving Forward

Mrs.T’s class has really been moving forward with doing p4c and pushing her class to really think about how they personally contribute to our discussions in different ways. Last week, Mrs.T and I have been thinking of ways we can move forward and I brought up how they can write more so we can see the improvement of their writing this time around. Personally, with this class they have improved on their skills with p4c and they haven’t lost their momentum from last semester.

Mrs. T created a reflection paper which included rating themselves and the class, what parts of the good thinker’s toolkit they used, and writing down a wonder they have after our discussion. In my opinion, this way of reflecting is better for them and myself because  it gives them a chance to think and reflect on our discussion. The teacher and myself also get to see how they truly feel how they did and if we agree on their ratings.

“The quieter you become, the more you can hear,” even though someone may be quiet in a discussion, you may be thinking a lot about what others may be saying. Dominique never said a word during the discussion, but he did write a question in his reflection. I could tell he was listening to the other students in the class because it was related to what one of the other students said during the discussion. I guess I shouldn’t just think a student doesn’t care by the way they present themselves, because even if they look like they aren’t doing anything, their minds could be doing a lot of the work.

One thing that really stood out to me during this visit was the use of the good thinker’s toolkit sentence starters. The teacher created a layout of sentence starters and question frames they could use if they needed help trying to say what they needed to say. Becky used “ In my opinion…” and another student asked “ What do you mean by…” so that was really great to see.

I wonder what I did differently that made this class grasp the importance of p4c than other schools that we work with? Did I do or say something to motivate the teachers and/or students to make them have a better understanding of p4c? I like that we are moving forward and now I have a chance to see what the students are left wondering with and try and find articles that are related to a common topic they have in their reflections. I hope we stay at the rate we are going at and continue to grow.