LET’S TALK about cognitive thinking

What’s up my fellow readers! It is THE GREATEST BLOGGER in the North East…. Jordan, Classroom Talk, Holmes coming at you with another Blog.

Classroom talk is important and the language we use with children influences many assets in the child’s life.

The article I chose to annotate today is Talking in class: Remembering what is important about classroom talk.

Peter H. Johnston grew up and taught elementary school in New Zealand before coming to the United States to earn his Ph.D. His research explores the relationships among classroom talk, engagement, and children’s social, emotional and literate development. How our language affects children’s learning. He believes that education is not simply about delivering information to children. He thinks it is as much about building a just, caring society as growing intellectually as well as socially.

This article discusses how Amy, a middle school teacher, uses classroom talk on a daily basis to get insight on her students thinking. Sam is an eighth-grade student in Amy’s class, he gives a book talk on In Ecstasy (McCaffrey, 2009). This book is told across the shifting perspectives of two best friends struggling with drugs and relationships. After Sam tells about the life of one of the two characters spiraling downward, Amy asks, “If you were her best friend, what would you tell her?”

Asking your students guiding questions is a great way to stir up classroom talk and get a perspective on a situation. Classroom talk involves a lot of different aspects but student comprehension is really what’s important here. you can check for understanding by asking preliminary questions connecting the topic to students’ prior experiences and knowledge which may seem trivial, but in actuality are important threads in classroom talk. Amy makes it clear that encountering problems while reading is normal and certainly not an indicator of inability, Which is a comment proven to boost students level of confidence and relieve much stress when coming across texts.

Some of Amy’s questions require the students to discuss decision-making processes they themselves might face. This is another positive as the student is basically practicing talking through real life scenarios that they may or may not come across in their social palette. Language choice as a teacher is very important to the students development. There is a big difference between  When a teacher says, “How did you do that?” instead of “Good boy!” The first comment allows the student to think about his or hers thinking well the second one actually produces the reverse. In other words, affective connections to reading can be triggered by what we say and closed-ended questions and comments can easily reduce the chance of engagement. There can be limitations to this method because you need to be careful not to over look the content. The content of what the student needs to learn is still important and you can’t forget to continue to teach the student and not have them try to learn everything on their own.

“Teaching is not simply about developing individual minds. We have to help students learn to build productive learning communities as well.” This is an important concept as we need to help the student learn ways to build on their own learning whether than just have them except a right or wrong answer. This whole article is reviewing one of my favorite topics which goes by the name of COGNITIVE THINKING AKA thinking about your thinking.

Johnston, P., Ivey, G., & Faulkner, A. (2011). Talking in class: Remembering what is important about classroom talk. The Reading Teacher, 65(4), 232-237. https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/TRTR.01033