A Thoughtful Classroom:  My Truth-Seeking Expedition with Year 2 Students

Friday, November 5, 2010

"Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.

"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."

"And he has Brain."

"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."

There was a long silence.

"I suppose," said Pooh, "that’s why he never understands anything."

AA Milne

What an astute Pooh! He highlights the contrast between being academically smart and being able to understand. Ritchhart (2002) describes this as being ‘street smart’. Do we want our students to be clever Rabbits or astute Poohs?

I want my students to be more than academically smart. I want them to pursue deep understanding and become seekers of truth. I like to think in metaphors, and I picture my students as thinking like mini archaeologists, persistently digging and searching, at times being very careful, delicately brushing away the layers and at times digging furiously as they search for truth and understanding. I want students who question, probe, seek - peeling off the layers to find the artefact or gem within, thus being able to make hypotheses or make claims, citing the evidence of their finds. They need also to know where to dig. I want students to become sensitive to where truth is at stake. In short, I want my students to become seekers of truth and understanding.

In my Year 2 classroom this year I was interested in exploring the children’s development of the critical thinking disposition of truth-seeking. Our school is an independent, Christian school from prep to year 10, with a student population of 270.  I have 20 students who are 7-8 years old. The children are naturally very trusting and consequently, can be quite gullible. As a whole they are not perceptive in identifying where truth is at stake. They accept ideas and claims easily without questioning or requesting evidence. In my first year of teaching Year 2 (last year), I noticed that the children tended to make wild assertions, generalisations and to jump to conclusions without considering evidence. When I probed for explanations or asked how they knew an idea was true, they might say, ‘the teacher said so,’ or ‘I saw it on television’. This year’s class was similar.

I wanted to develop the students’ critical thinking disposition, and had been dabbling with the use of thinking routines from the Visible Thinking Website. Three years previously, I initiated a project in my school called, ‘Thoughtful Classrooms’. We hired a consultant (Dr Steve Tobias from James Cook University) and presented to the staff the ideas of intellectual character, thinking dispositions and thinking routines. Our principal embraced the ideas, and the development of thinking became a whole school focus. Although I was very excited about the concept of the routines, I also questioned their effectiveness. How could I know that they make a difference to my students’ thinking? Would they become an intrinsic part of my students’ thinking, rather than just a mechanical process used only in the classroom?

I wanted to focus closely on the use of one routine, monitoring its use and exploring who my students were becoming as thinkers and learners. I decided on Claim Support Question. My aim was that my students would become independent thinkers and communicators who would spontaneously justify their ideas through reasoning and evidence, engaging with the ideas of others and becoming questioners as they searched for truth. My inquiry focused on the following question: Will the use of the routine Claim Support Question assist the children’s development of the critical thinking disposition of truth-seeking?

The data collection phase of this project spanned two terms. All discussions were tape recorded and later transcribed. I noted whether students were supporting their ideas with reasoning or with evidence and whether they were showing a truth-seeking disposition. I kept a journal and tried to reflect a few times each week on the progress of their thinking.  The children also kept a thinking journal where they recorded their perceptions of ‘truth-seeking’.

Expectations that impact my teaching

I started my teaching career with a keen interest in developing critical thinking which had been instilled in me through my university training and through reading ‘Intellectual Character’ by Ron Ritchhart (2002). I was also very conscious of the numerous people I have known who struck me as great thinkers and who had experienced exceptional success in life, and yet had not been identified at school as being smart. Or, in some cases their abilities were recognised but they chose not to be ‘teacher pleasers’ and so did not necessarily succeed in the school system. In fact, they often felt suppressed by the school system.

My interest in developing critical thinking was frustrated in my early years of teaching as the reality of life in the classroom meant my focus was on content and skill development. It is only as my teaching expertise is developing that I am able to move beyond this narrow focus and can begin to develop thinking, questioning students. The key for me to move past a simplistic teaching style has been in discovering the thinking routines from the Visible Thinking Website. However, in addition to embracing the routines, I was also very sceptical. They seemed too simple a tool to be able to achieve complex changes. I wanted to know what the evidence was of their effectiveness. I needed to try them for myself and monitor my own students’ changes in thinking - hence this project.

I believe in the importance of collaborative discussion; that for children to effectively use the routines, they need to have the language and skills to effectively communicate – listening, responding and building on each others’ ideas, respectfully arguing and grappling with ideas through reasoning. I am aware of the balance of collaborative learning and individual learning that has impacted my own ability to think - reason and understand. A lot of my thinking and writing occurs in solitude. However - and it is a big however - my thoughts and ideas can only reach a certain level; it is when I engage in discussions with others, or listen to or read about the ideas of other people, that my own understanding builds. I begin to see different perspectives and connections. The bouncing off of ideas against another person is a powerful impetus and shaper in developing my own thinking. Ritchhart (2006:19) describes collaboration as: ‘epistemic chemistry in a group setting - such as when one student’s idea sparks another’s question, or when one student’s claim sparks another’s search for evidence— the “whole” of the group learning process is truly greater than the sum of its parts.’  In order to collaborate, the children need to learn a ‘thinking’ vocabulary and group communication skills of listening and building on each others’ comments. Having effective language and listening skills will enhance their use of the routine, Claim Support Question, which in turn will enable their thinking and understanding to deepen.

Claim Support Question Fosters Truth-seeking

The Claim Support Question routine was devised by Ritchhart in collaboration with his colleagues. I was drawn to this routine because it encourages students to justify their ideas by reasoning with evidence. It encourages them to consider why they hold certain beliefs and ideas. It gives them a strategy for developing understanding.

Ritchhart (2006) describes the questioning component as ‘inviting a challenge to the initial claim’. I really liked the description that the questions are ‘….both engines and outcomes of learning’. He explains that this ‘contrasts with the traditional notion that learning is a closed loop that begins with a question and ends with an answer.’

I thought about the engine….. An engine gives power and enables movement and change. The importance of questions rose in my mind as I thought about the power, movement and change that they drove.  Are questions an outcome of learning?  Thinking about my own school education, I had been used to learning which occurred in neat bundles – I learnt a component and moved to the next section. Continual questioning was not something that I had learnt from the education system, but it is something that I tend to do during my own quiet reflection and study times. I reflected that I had not often encouraged my students to do this. The routine provided a structure for me as well as the students, reminding me of the importance of not only teaching the students to search for evidence but also to continually question ideas.

Creating Opportunities

Throughout the first two weeks of the project, I observed and listened carefully during lessons and general discussions to note whether the children supported their ideas or questioned the ideas of other students. I noted whether there was any attempt at reasoning through ideas.  During the second week I asked the children to complete a concept map on ‘Truth’. During this lesson I asked the children to place the word ‘truth’ into the centre of their map and to write down as many ideas as they could about truth – what it meant to them, how they could find out the truth etc. I asked them to think more broadly than just truth/lies and to think about how we can learn and find out the truth. This gave me some important data on the students’ depth of thinking and their range of ideas. Many of the children focused on the concept of truth versus lies which is perhaps a reflection of their practising Christian backgrounds.

From Explicit Instruction to Periodic Reminders

I commenced by explicitly teaching my students the routine, Claim Support Question. I prepared three large posters:

CLAIM – An explanation or interpretation of some aspect of the topic

SUPPORT – Things you feel, see and know that support your claim (evidence)

QUESTION – What isn’t explained? What new questions are raised?

We read through the posters and I explained each step to the children. I connected the routine to their concept map of ‘truth’. I explained that this routine could help them to learn and understand new ideas and to find out the truth. We did some examples together and the children used their own lives as the context, so that they were discussing an idea or claim that was very familiar to them. For example, Georgia made the claim that she was 8 years old. She supported that claim by saying that she had had eight birthday parties. We then raised the question, ‘How could you remember all of those parties? She supported her claim further by saying, ‘I have photos’. We then moved on to facts about the world and topics that we had been studying in the classroom. This gave the children familiar content with which to practise the CSQ routine.

I also provided templates for the children to record their ideas. For example, we read the fairytale, Jack and the Beanstalk and I prepared a CSQ worksheet. There was a picture of Jack with a blank speech bubble. I explained:

I want you to pretend that you are Jack and you are asking the old woman how she could support her claim that the beans are magic.

Jack and the Beanstalk

What would you do if an old woman made the claim that her beans were magic? 

How would you ask her to support her claim?

Write what you would say.

What new questions do you have now? _____________

__________________________________________

The aim of the templates was to enable the children to record their ideas and for me to monitor the developments in each student’s thinking. The limitation with only using data from discussions, is that not every child may contribute.

I constantly modelled the use of the routines and made my own thinking visible. By verbalising my thoughts and incorporating the word ‘claim’ and then providing the evidence for my claim, I was teaching the vocabulary and how to use the thinking routine in context. I tried to encourage truth-seeking thinking by using an eclectic range of methods, and in many subject areas, from science, history and maths lessons dealing with facts, to literature lessons of fantasy and drawing on the children’s imagination. Ritchhart explains that continual practice in a variety of contexts is essential to develop critical thinking (Ritchhart 2002:49). By teaching the routine in a variety of contexts, I hoped that the children would not just associate the routine with one lesson, but would be more likely to internalise the value of supporting claims and providing evidence, and it would become an intrinsic part of their thinking character.

We used the CSQ routine many times, but by the second term of the project, I started to reduce that scaffolding. During discussions, I would not always start by saying “I want you to use CSQ”, but rather, I tried encouraging the students to take the lead in the discussion and when one spontaneously supported their idea or claim, then I affirmed and paraphrased, saying something like: ‘I love the way that Shaun just supported his idea or his claim. Did you notice that he gave a reason for his idea? So he just supported his claim, just like when we used Claim Support Question. Does that raise any questions or new ideas for anybody?’ I reminded myself that it was more than a routine or a skill that I was teaching them, but the routine was simply the vehicle or the structure which enabled the students to develop an internal way of thinking that became an intrinsic part of their character – a disposition to think in a certain way. Ritchhart explains the importance of providing only just enough structure so that the students internalise the value. ‘It is the periodic intervention and responsive reminders that are most effective.’ (Ritchhart 2002: 45). If I continued to explicitly introduce each lesson by saying, ‘I want you to use CSQ’ or by reminding students before they speak about supporting their claims, they would become dependent on the external prompts.

The Truth-Seeking Journey of My Year 2 Class

Into the Jungle - Unsupported Ideas and Wild Claims

The pre data collection of the first two weeks confirmed my concern that very few children were aware of the need to justify their ideas. During a history lesson there was a vivid example of how children can make wild claims without being mindful of evidence or logical reasoning. Michael made the claim that there were computers in the 1800s. He provided no justification, although after some prompting he said that he had seen it on a TV show. He believed what he had seen, despite the contradictions which we explored: for instance, computers have plastic and need electricity, neither of which was available in the 1800s. He would not budge from his claim because he had seen it on a TV show which he believed was about facts, therefore must be true.

Towards the end of the lesson I focused on the trustworthiness of television shows. We discussed the importance of comparing claims to other information sources and asking ourselves, ‘Does it make sense?’ For example, an information book will tell us that there was no plastic or electricity in the 1800s, therefore a plastic computer requiring electricity could not have existed. I encouraged Michael to do an internet search: Were there computers in the 1800s? When were they built? Was there plastic in the 1800s? Was there electricity? Opportunities were created for Michael to search further and it was satisfying to hear him say, ‘I’ve changed my mind’.

Into the Village - Collaborative Discussion

A couple of weeks into this truth-seeking project, we were ready to engage in a philosophical discussion of Truth. The Visible Thinking website recommends having this formal discussion with the students to hear their ideas of the nature of truth and truth-seeking. The purpose is for the teacher to learn more about the students’ ideas and to cultivate the students’ sensitivity to the nature of truth-seeking and situations where truth is of concern.

I explained that we were a community who could learn from each other. If we wanted to become really good thinkers and truth-seekers then it was important that we listen very carefully to each other, thinking about the claims that the other children made, deciding whether we agreed or disagreed, and then building on those ideas. Sometimes another person’s ideas might be the prompt that we need to think of our own original idea. Fisher (2008:7) explains the importance of teaching students to communicate:

‘One of the key aims of any thinking programme therefore should be to develop linguistic intelligence through enhancing students’ powers of communication and concept formation.

We practised how to listen and how to respectfully take turns during a discussion. The children had a ball which they could pass to another child who wanted to contribute. During the practice phase, the children had to paraphrase and comment on another child’s idea before they could introduce their own.

During the Truth Discussion, it was very exciting to see how quickly the children were able to apply the skill of listening carefully to each others’ ideas and building further on those ideas with only a little prompting from me. Reasoning through ideas in a collaborative setting is a powerful pathway leading the children towards a truth-seeking disposition. I wanted to strongly establish these skills for them to effectively use the routine, Claim Support Question. Ritchhart (2006) describes it as the ‘epistemic chemistry in a group setting’.  The transcript below illustrates this. Although we did not formally use the CSQ routine during this discussion, I embedded it within from my own prompts and the essence of it becomes apparent later in the transcript. 

I began the discussion by explaining: ‘We’re going to talk about truth. What does it mean for something to be true?’

Lisa:  Truth means when you hurt someone and you have to tell the truth.

Allie:  If you tell a lie and your mum asks you. Like, if I pinched my sister and mum asked me and she would ask if I was telling the truth.

Teacher: Can you think of truth in a different context, not just truth and lies?

Esther: You can get truth from books, teachers and internet.

Michael:  It’s like I got something wrong on a maths test and Mrs Vear writes down the true answer.

Candice: If you look up on the internet it might not be true. 

Teacher: I like the way that Candice is building on Esther’s comment by saying that you can get facts from the internet but sometimes it is not true. Can someone else build on what Candice has just said?

Although Candice was expanding on Esther’s comment, she didn’t actually state that, so this was an important moment to direct the children’s attention to the principle of building information and ideas.

Naomi:  I’m going to build on to Candice’s. When you watch TV, it might be a show where they say everything’s true, but it’s actually not.

At this point the children steadily began to mimic Candice’s behaviour and the discussion suddenly became more sophisticated as the children clearly listened to each other and rather than repeating the same idea or isolated ideas, as young children tend to do, they were able to expand ideas. Geordie made an interesting comment about the importance of not saying something is true unless you are sure. He was beginning to demonstrate an understanding of how to support claims.

Well, adding on to Candice’s ideas about the computer, I have made my own web page but I only put things on my welcome page (opinions), but I never put anything that is true (facts) because I’m not sure if it is true.

Abigail: 

Adding on to Geordie’s thing, sometimes you can’t really see if something is true on the computer you have to look it up for yourself and that might not be true either so you have to think about it yourself.

Both Geordie and Abigail have listened carefully to the comments of other students and have built on those ideas given previously. Abigail shows scepticism by realising the importance of not believing everything that we read but to think for ourselves. Geordie differentiates between facts and opinions (although he did not use those words). I made a mental note to teach the children the new vocabulary – ‘facts and opinions’ in my weekly guided reading lessons.

 

Although the children began with entrenched ideas of truth in the moral context of truth/lies, they were quickly able to move into various contexts of truth-seeking, providing comments such as: check a variety of information sources, test things out for yourself (Michael – recreate like Mythbusters), be sceptical (although this word was not used). Several children also pointed out that people can make mistakes, not realising it, or they can accidentally give incorrect information.  We were getting away from the idea of truth-seeking being solely focused on honesty versus the deliberate deception of lies.

 

Madison also quickly pointed out the strategy of using, Claim Support Question. This was satisfying, considering this was only the second week of this project and there had only been a couple of explicit lessons, using CSQ. Although the children were not yet using many of the truth-seeking terms or language (eg: looking for evidence, being sceptical, making connections) the concept was there.

Levi really stood out, making many insightful comments. Shaun had made the comment that you can trust that everything in the Bible is true. Levi responded with: ‘There are some – what do you call them? Metaphors. They don’t literally mean it’. We have talked a lot about metaphors this year. Although metaphors are an abstract concept for Year 2 children, I regularly explained and gave them examples, so that they are able to differentiate between literal ideas and figures of speech. We had been learning to use similes in our writing and so it was an exciting moment when Levi made this connection and was able to make such an insightful comment at an appropriate moment.

Abigail expanded the discussion further, indicating that she was carefully listening and thinking about Shaun and Levi’s comments:  But how do you know that’s true?  Yes, how do you know which are the metaphors?

This project seems to have really encouraged Abigail to question, and she is beginning to question every idea!  In this incident, Abigail’s question has arisen as an outcome of her learning. It will in turn become an engine to drive her learning further as she digs through the mire, sifting the metaphors from the literal truths, enabling her to find the gems. It has been interesting to observe Abigail throughout my truth-seeking project. She is a student who achieves at an average academic level (with slightly low literacy skills) but this type of philosophical discussion created a wonderful opportunity for Abigail to shine. As well as building on other students’ ideas, she was able to contribute original ideas and to think about practical outcomes: ‘You need to make sure that you don’t tell anyone else until you check it’s true.’ This was an opportune time to connect Abigail’s ideas with my key words: claim and support. ‘That’s really another big idea – be careful about telling others until you can support your claim’.

Three quarters of the way through the discussion I started making notes on the board about the ‘big ideas’ of truth-seeking. I summarised the children’s comments into groups such as: evidence, facts, checking for yourself, testing (recreating – like Myth busters), listening to a variety of sources etc. I hadn’t intended to do a concept map, but it became natural to draw some links between the ideas, and was a good place to allow the discussion to finish. I was amazed that the children stayed focused and involved for such a lengthy period of time. It also emphasised to me the importance of not under-estimating the type of philosophical discussion of which young children are capable.

Who are the Children Becoming as Thinkers and Learners?

Questioning & Digging for Truth (Scepticism)

I began to see an overall, steady improvement in my students’ thinking. They had become far more questioning and sceptical. They were asking: can we believe that? Many of the children were saying that we need to be careful about believing what we read on the internet.  At this age I would not normally do a lot of teaching about the credibility of websites, but through the constant use of the CSQ routine the children had become so discerning and sceptical that I had been compelled to do several lessons on how to determine a credible source.

In science we had been studying the weather and during a discussion on the origins of rain, some of the children presented accurate ideas about evaporation and the water cycle. They offered support for their claims such as, ‘a scientist told me’ or ‘I read it in a science book’. I initially thought this sounded good, but I realised that they were really just regurgitating what they had heard and it was not really evidence of critical thinking, although they were supporting their ideas and so it was a stage in the process. But Shaun thought about the ideas and questioned further: ‘What if the science people are wrong?  They’re not exactly correct because you don’t know.’  I responded with: ‘Shaun is being – this is an important word to help us know the truth. Shaun is being sceptical. But how do they know that? How could we find out the truth? Perhaps we need to look at the evidence and think about why scientists say that.

Towards the end of the first term of the project, Allie surprised me. I could see that she wasn’t delicately brushing away the dirt to find the artefacts, but she was going for truth in a big way.  ‘How do we know that the Bible is true?’  This was the first time I had ever heard a student of any year level ask this question. The comment occurred towards the end of the day and was not during a philosophical discussion or a specific Claim Support Question activity. Allie was clearly internalising the value of truth-seeking – asking questions, being sceptical (in a healthy, probing manner) and requesting evidence. This was a sign that the epistemic moves of Claim Support Question were being internalised. Allie was reflecting the essence of the routine in her question and her request for reasons.

Allie’s question allowed us the opportunity to discuss some of the reasons for our faith. At a basic level I encourage the children to think critically about their faith so that it is not a ‘blind faith’ but a thinking faith. I want the children to be able to explain why they believe as they do (within the limits of their age). We have talked about the difference between evidence that can be proven and evidence that cannot be proven but is still based on reasons. For me as the teacher, this type of question does raise tensions as I try to balance the teaching of critical thinking with information that is appropriate for their age and which will also respect the children’s families’ expectations. A family who had a professional role within the church said to me, “I want my child to think about why they believe in God. I don’t want him to be indoctrinated.” However, I would assume that not all families hold this type of attitude. So I need to be sensitive to the various attitudes, balancing those tensions carefully, diplomatically and honestly.

Misconceptions and Enculturative Forces

A new girl, Mirandah, had started at our school in the first week of the new term, so had missed out on the focus on truth-seeking. It was very interesting to see the contrast between her initial thinking and that of the rest of the class and then to observe how quickly she followed their patterns of thinking. I posed the question: ‘What causes the rain?’  She was quick to respond with: ‘It is God crying’. I asked her: ‘What makes you say that?’ Her reply was a shrug of the shoulders. I couldn’t help but ask, ‘Do you really believe that?’ She nodded. It was obvious that the rest of the class had a very different mindset and were quite surprised by her comment. This reminds me of one of those ‘wild claims’ I observed during the pre-data phase, such as Michael’s belief there were computers in the 1800s. As Mirandah had only just joined our class, this comment became part of the pre-data of her changing thinking.

I became alarmed when it was evident that Mirandah’s comment had influenced Lisa’s thinking: ‘He has a hose and it sprays’. I am aware of respecting and valuing the children’s ideas but I’m also conscious of their misconceptions infiltrating other children’s ideas and also the time constraints in the classroom and the need at times to rein in the misconceptions and redirect the discussion. It was time for me to intervene and encourage some logical thinking: ‘We want some scientific thinking. We’re going to be like scientists and try to find out the truth of some of these claims. Do you think that a scientist might say that God is crying? (Later I realised that I missed a perfect opportunity to not only affirm them and to encourage risk-taking with sharing of ideas but also to reinforce the teaching of metaphors. I could have said, ‘What a wonderful metaphor you have created’). The children resumed their logical thinking as they struggled to find explanations to explain the origin of the rain that were based on reasoning. Mirandah sat quietly listening as the children shared their ideas. Many of the children had heard about the water cycle and evaporation. They shared these ideas and provided support, such as, ‘I read it in a science book’.

While I am encouraging the children to think logically and scientifically, this does not mean that I am taking God out of the picture. We see God as the greatest scientist which we cannot fully explain or prove. The children are also taught (at a higher level) to differentiate between scientific ideas which are proven facts and those which are theories.  The children are also encouraged to be open to the spiritual dimension of their lives.

Mirandah again features predominantly in the next two sections which highlight children’s misconceptions as they grapple to find truth and understanding. The first was a discussion concerning the origin of the wind and the second focused on condensation on windows.

I posed the question, ‘What causes the wind?’ Mirandah, who earlier in the discussion showed illogical thinking with her comment about God crying, now mimicked the children by attempting to build her own explanation of the origins of the wind: ‘Probably the water goes so hard and rushed into the sky that it makes the wind. Because if the water wasn’t rushed we wouldn’t have any wind. Because I saw it on a show and Mum told me. But it can be wrong or right.’ I can see in Mirandah’s ideas that her thinking patterns have moved already from a black and white, illogical thinking, to a position where she was starting to try to reason and to think of a logical explanation and also tempering it with – ‘probably’ and ‘But it can be right or wrong’. She appears to have very quickly picked up on the need to support a claim, to build on the ideas of others; and she was showing original thinking and creating new ideas by connecting the ideas of evaporation and movement of the wind. Although her idea was not scientifically correct, it was a sign that good thinking was beginning to bud.

The next section is part of a transcription on a discussion about condensation. I posed the question ‘Where does the moisture come from that is on our bedroom windows?’ 

Teacher – ‘But how does the moisture get into the bedroom. We don’t have holes in the roof.’

Mirandah – ‘If you have curtains and it’s really cold and the curtains might heat up the windows to make it foggy.’

Teacher – ‘The curtains heating up the window, but how would that make it foggy?’

Mirandah –‘It’s like all this heat and cold windows and heat building on to the windows so it might make fog.’

Teacher – ‘Remember we found out earlier from our experiment that fog is moisture – little water droplets. Does heat produce water?’

Mirandah – ‘Sometimes it can. Because I once put my hand over hot steam and water droplets came out.’

Teacher – ‘So you think the heat makes water? It’s really hot over there near the heater. We will test out your claim. Can you see water being produced near the heater?

Although I did not specifically say to the children, ‘we are doing a Claim Support Question’ it was clearly embedded into this exchange. Mirandah had made the claim – that heat produces water, she had supported her claim with her experience of steam and now we were finishing with a question: But can our heater produce water? Through testing her claim she was able to realise the need to discard it and search for evidence to help her to form a new claim.

The progress in Mirandah’s thinking has been rapid which appears to be an effect of the enculturative force of the thinking routine, Claim Support Question. Mirandah very quickly followed the culture of the classroom of supporting ideas with reasons and trying to make connections between the topic being discussed and the children’s real experiences in an effort to build an explanation. Although Mirandah’s ideas were inaccurate, they were evidence of her journey towards truth as she built a bridge from her own experiences to explain where the water comes from. She has noticed the connection between heat and condensation and had been able to construct her own hypothesis. Further guidance was needed to enable her to take her understanding further so that she realised the interaction of heat and cold on water. 

I reflected on two issues following this discussion – the enculturative force of Claim Support Question and the balance between allowing children to construct their own understandings and express their ideas, and my responsibility as a teacher to know when to intervene and explicitly correct any misconceptions. Karagiorgi & Symeou (2005:21) propound the importance of challenging misconceptions. As Mirandah expressed her idea, I grappled with the dilemma of whether to intervene and question her misconception, or to allow it to become a free discussion with the other children. I chose to intervene because this part of the discussion came after thirty minutes of discussing the moisture on our windows and it was time to bring it to a close. I was concerned that Mirandah’s ideas would be embraced by the other children, thereby reproducing the misconceptions.

Making Connections

As I have reflected on the progress of the children’s thinking and analysed the transcripts of our discussions, the theme of making connections continually arises. In order to build their explanations and support their ideas, the children who were really showing evidence of critical thinking, were able to identify a commonality between different contexts.  This is an important step in the stages towards being able to analogise.

Geake, an educational neuroscientist, asserts that analogy making is the very essence of intelligent behaviour. He explains that better students are able to encode their memory through relationships.

Lower achieving students seem to have greater compartmentalization of memory storage, that is, less remembering at a relational level. Consequently, greater mental resources are allocated to the local level of the task at hand, for example, calculation, rather than to the global or metacognitive level of task monitoring, for example, estimation….  This creates a vicious cycle where basic skills remain non automatic, yet cannot be readily self-corrected. In contrast, better students seem to have less a priori memory compartmentalization, and rely more on metaphor and analogy…. Consequently, as a matter of principle, all curricula should encourage pupils’ metaphorical thinking to promote relational memory encoding.

(Geake, 2009: 96)

Making connections can be described as relational memory encoding and is a step towards analogising which is a more sophisticated and abstract form. Michael builds towards a deep understanding of rainbows by thinking about them on a relational level. He notices a connection between rainbows on a shiny disc and rainbows in the sky. He was able to move beyond identifying the places where we might see a rainbow, which some of the other children were doing and was attempting to analyse a causal component. He could see a common feature between different forms of rainbows. He was also able to articulate that he was making this connection. ‘Well I know how a disc reflects because if you don’t have the lights on it won’t reflect but the disc is shiny and lights are shiny too so it’s like water is shiny and that sort of connects to me.’ I summarised Michael’s ideas to enable some of the other children to understand the connection that he had made.

Teacher - See what Michael is doing. He is connecting different ideas and that helps us to build our understanding and helps us to find the truth. Michael has made a connection between water and a disc. And he’s thought - now what is similar? Because we can have a rainbow when there is water and we can have a rainbow with a disc when there is no water, so he has thought, there must be something in common between those two things. Michael has thought, now what is common and he’s realised that they’re both shiny. Let’s hold on to that idea and we’re going to explore that idea and find the truth.

Of course the children were never going to discover the causes of a rainbow themselves, but through this discussion and connection making and the attempt to construct their own understandings through searching for reasons and support for claims, they were curious and ready to hear an explicit explanation about the refraction of light and the separation of colours – a complex concept for Year 2 children.  We were then able to accurately identify what the connection was between a rainbow on a compact disc and a rainbow reflecting off a water droplet.

Geordie made an insightful connection after listening to Michael’s idea about the origin of rain. Michael – ‘All the water evaporates and goes up into the clouds and the clouds get so full that they rain and start to drip.’ I decided to not instantly affirm Michael’s idea because I am conscious that he is clearly regurgitating from another source and this would be a great opportunity to show by example the importance of testing our ideas in order to support our claims. I also wanted to move away from the notion that I had all the answers and all they needed to do was to listen to me and passively absorb. It is important that the children are guided towards constructing their own understanding through actively supporting their claims with evidence and thinking about the connections themselves. Karagiorgi & Symeou (2005:18) explain that learning is from the construction of knowledge through our own personal filters of prior knowledge.

Teacher – I’m not saying if these claims are true or false. You’re making the claims. We need to talk about how we can support our claims. How can we find out which ones are true?’

Geordie – I know that Michael is right because once I tried this experiment with hot water and I saw the actual smoke (vapour).

Teacher – So you recreated. You saw the vapour. It looks like smoke, but it’s vapour.

Teacher – Remember in our truth discussion, Michael suggested that we need to recreate like the Myth Busters and that is what Geordie has done. So we might recreate and see if we can find out where the rain comes from.  We’re going to do an experiment with a glass of water and a plastic bag.

Geordie’s comment is evidence of critical thinking; he is providing justificatory reasoning for Michael’s claims by broadening his thinking and connecting the claim with a past experiment. Geordie saw the common factor between the water cycle and the experiment that he had done with steam. The rest of the children needed to gain this same experience. When we conducted an experiment of evaporation of the water in a glass contained within a plastic bag, with some guidance, they were able to make the connections to the water cycle. I summarised that lesson by reiterating the importance of supporting our claims with some evidence or reasons.

The power of making connections is further illustrated by a comment that Esther made during a discussion about condensation on windows. I had asked the children, ‘How does the moisture get on to our bedroom windows in the morning? Where does the moisture come from?’ I had not prompted the children to use Claim Support Question, but Esther spontaneously chose to use it to provide support for her idea through making connections.

Esther – I have a story to it. Grandpop came to stay at our house and he was snoring that night and when I opened my curtains it was fogged up and when I opened up the other curtains, they weren’t fogged up, so Pop must have fogged it up by snoring.  Also, I have a support, you know when you breathe it all fogs up and my question is: how does it fog up?

The Claim Support Question (CSQ) routine has clearly provided the scaffolding that guided Esther towards constructing an understanding of condensation on the window. It has been interesting to observe Erin’s progress throughout this inquiry.  For most of the two terms Esther struggled to follow or use the CSQ routine. During discussions she would try to join in but would usually reword my question as a statement, rather than develop her own independent ideas or find reasons to support ideas. Her comment was very exciting for me because it was the first occasion when she had not only been able to use the CSQ routine, but did it spontaneously, making a relevant and insightful connection which enabled her to form an hypothesis, provide support for her idea and then to further question. Her question is an indication that she realises that her connection between condensation on the windows and her grandfather’s snoring is not complete and she needs to explore further to find out exactly how the snoring might have caused the fog and the condensation. This particular discussion continued for a lengthy time and it was Esther who was able to finally say, ‘it was the moisture from his breath’. She was truly able to construct her own understanding through the collaborative nature of inquiry and the structure provided by Claim Support Question. Her journey towards truth and understanding developed as the class collectively dug deeply through the ideas, grappling, discussing and sharing the artefacts of ideas and piecing those clues together. By building on each others’ ideas, the children were able to make connections between breathing and condensation, which we tested out by breathing on the windows in the classroom and seeing and feeling the moisture. I finalised this section of our learning with an explicit lesson on dewpoint and condensation.

A Closer Look at the Evidence

Geordie – It was evident at the beginning of the year that Geordie had been receiving a lot of extra tuition from his parents. He could reel off facts, particularly in science and maths, but he did not always show understanding or the ability to generalise or apply his knowledge in a different context to the one being discussed. Geordie was reticent to make comments which required any degree of analysis or hypothesis making. He was only prepared to share facts, rather than thoughts. He would become a little anxious when presented with a problem solving task in maths. This was something that he hadn’t memorised and therefore wasn’t prepared to give it a go. The maths enrichment teacher commented that although Geordie had demonstrated some very advanced skills, such as long division, it struck her as being like a ‘party trick’. He didn’t appear to really understand what he was doing, but rather, it was a formula that he had memorised. Similarly, another teacher commented that while on yard duty, Geordie had excitedly told her all about an aspect of maths. She also expressed the hunch that he didn’t really understand what he was talking about but liked to show off ‘stacks of facts’. 

Throughout the two terms of the project, I observed Geordie becoming much more prepared to ‘dig through’ ideas and to begin to form hypotheses. He started to move beyond just the retelling of memorised facts. During discussions when he would attempt to form an explanation he started making connections between different contexts, such as experiments he had done. He was then able to develop an hypothesis.

An interesting development in Geordie’s confidence and risk-taking was evident towards the end of term. I gave the children a maths problem-solving task of discovering the rule in a variety of patterns. This time Geordie stuck at it, persevering until he began to discover some solutions. His willingness and his determination to find the answer by himself demonstrated his significant progress in truth-seeking. Naturally Geordie’s confidence and risk taking would probably have increased anyway throughout the year as he matured, so it’s not a black and white case of being able to claim that my focus on Claim Support Question and truth-seeking is the sole cause of this development.

Contrasted below are Geordie’s two concept maps on Truth. The first one was done at the beginning of Term 2 when my truth-seeking project began. The second one was at the end of Term 3.  Dramatic progress is evident in the greater sophistication of the second map. He has moved away from the notion of truth being solely concerned with truth versus lies and shows an abundance of truth-seeking ideas with intricate connections.

First concept map:

Second Concept map:

Geordie has shown insightfulness, original ideas and creative thinking with his statement, ‘When you fail and come to a dead end look for a start of a new idea’. He emphasises the importance of evidence, supporting claims and making connections. These ideas are evidence that Geordie is demonstrating a truth-seeking disposition.

Melanie is another student who has surprised me with the changes in her thinking, showing a greater disposition towards truth-seeking and critical thinking. I have chosen to look at Melanie’s progress a little more closely because she is at the other end of the spectrum to Geordie. She has experienced numerous learning difficulties and is in remedial classes for both mathematics and English. A look at her two concepts maps shows some progress in the amount and range of ideas.

First concept map:

Second concept map:

Melanie has emphasised the importance of evidence in her concept map. Even more striking than her concept maps was her application of the first two steps of Claim Support Question when she tried to reason through the movement of water in the water cycle. After putting together our water experiment (a glass of water enclosed tightly in a plastic bag) we were discussing our predictions. Melanie predicted that some of the water would leave the jar and the plastic bag would fog up. I asked Melanie, ‘What makes you say that?’

Melanie – I saw when Dad walked Ruby a few nights ago he saw in the morning that the windows were all wet and fogged up across the road from the cemetery.

Teacher – So you noticed the windows of the house were all fogged up and you could see water on the window.  What made you think about that when you were writing about your experiment?

Melanie- Because it will just be the same there.

Teacher - Can you see what Mel has done?  Now that’s really good thinking because Mel has made a connection. We’re focusing on Melanie’s idea now. She’s tried to support her claim by talking about the fogged up windows.  So what would be similar do you think? Why would Melanie make a connection between the fogged up windows and the water on the glass and our plastic bag which Melanie believes is going to fog up?

Melanie – ‘Because they’re both water’.

I have highlighted Melanie’s ideas rather than choosing another child who might have completed a more striking concept map similar to Geordie’s, because children like Melanie are often the ones who miss out on enrichment because their time is spent in remedial activities and basic skill practice. I’m not implying that the basic skill practice should be reduced, because repetition is still essential for these children to master those basic skills. But what is important is that they also be given opportunities for critical thinking. These children particularly should be guided towards making connections to enable them to encode their memories through the use of relationships.

Pulling It Together - Main Findings

Original Ideas

What strikes me about many of the discussions over the past term is the amount of original ideas, as the children attempted to form hypotheses. They were not just repeating what they had heard from me or from their parents or what they had read in a book. They really were digging through the ideas, finding the broken artefacts (the clues), making the connections between the pieces (relationships between ideas and contexts) and finally, attempting to put them together. Sometimes they didn’t make a neat fit, so they turned them around and tried again, sometimes keeping them, sometimes discarding. When they discarded a claim, they searched for a new claim, such as Mirandah discarding her idea that heat creates water. 

Analogising and Making Connections

A recurring theme was the importance of making connections. As the children searched for reasons to support their claims, they made connections with other contexts. These relationships were a concrete way for the children to generalise their growing understanding beyond the specific context in front of them. The next level is the ability to abstract the connection by forming a basic analogy, such as when Joshua tried to explain how moisture from our body and breath got on to the bedroom window and formed the analogy that our breath is like the wind moving the rain. The routine, Connect Extend Challenge makes a snug fit and becomes a natural follow on from Claim Support Question. Although I did not specifically teach the entire Connect Extend Challenge routine, it became routine in our classroom to use the first step and the terminology of ‘connect’.

My inquiry has shown that teaching the concept of metaphors and analogies is not beyond the ability of the infant grades. Children can be introduced to the language of metaphors from everyday sayings and the similes in poetry. It starts at the basic level of helping children to compare and contrast – to identify what is similar and what is different. Encouraging children to see connections and relationships is a step towards the more abstract analogising. If the children who are struggling at school are explicitly taught to make connections and to see relationships between contexts and then to analogise, I wonder what effect this would have on their general learning and skill development.

Constructing a Deep Understanding

The children have progressed from being passive learners to independent and active learners. They are spontaneously asking many more questions and have assimilated the belief that questions are the engines and outcome of their learning. The routine was the initial tool with which the children were able to develop a deep understanding of the content through a more analytical style of thinking. This was evident from the understandings they developed about rainbows and about condensation and dewpoint.

Increased Concentration

I was surprised by the children’s dramatically increased concentration spans. Some of our very intense discussions lasted 45 minutes. The vast majority of the class was intensively engaged throughout all of that time.

Claim Support Question – Building an Intellectual Character

Ultimately, the routine, Claim Support Question was a very effective tool not only for the children, but for me as well. I began the project using the routine in a mechanical way. It provided me with a structure and a security. The prompts were so simple that I was able to direct my mental energies towards the topic we were exploring, rather than investing all my thought into following a procedure. However, we moved beyond a formulistic following of the routine, to naturally applying the intrinsic message or epistemic moves of the routine. We became so immersed in developing our deep understanding (mine as well as the students) that we came to naturally use the mental epistemic moves, thinking more critically and sceptically as we searched for evidence, and very importantly, making connections whilst the formal and mechanistic use of Claim Support Question lessened. I see those epistemic moves like moving chess pieces in my mind. We have all become far more strategic about our learning. I find myself questioning more as I’m learning and specifically questioning - how can I support that idea? What connections can I make and what relationships can I see?  Changes in my own thinking became evident as I moved past just a mechanical looking to see if the children were supporting their claim to thinking about whether the children were gaining a deeper understanding of the content by digging deeply.

Paramount in my mind at the end of my inquiry is: Can the routine, Claim Support Question and a focus on making connections affect the skill development of the students working at the remedial level? I think that this area warrants further research.

As the formal data collection stage of my inquiry has come to a close I reflect on the thinkers that my students have become. They are indeed, the mini archaeologists that I had envisaged. And, not to forget my original quote - I like to think that they are now not only smart little Rabbits but also astute Poohs!

References

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Milne, A.A. (1974) The house at pooh corner. London: Methuen Children’s Books

Ritchhart, R., Palmer, P., Church, M., Tishman, S. (2006) Establishing patterns of

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