A Tip or Two

Please consider contributing to this regular column on the Learning Forward Colorado website. Send your best professional learning strategies, designs, and techniques to Joan Watson at watsonj2@comcast.net.

Book Study Groups: Connections and the Four As Protocol
By Stevi Quate and John McDermott
From Clock Watchers: Six Steps to Motivating and Engaging Disengaged Students Across the Content Areas

Connections
In the crazy, busy world of teaching, time is a huge issue. Teachers want to know that their time in any kind of professional learning situation is maximized. One of the many roles of the facilitator is to carefully plan each study group gathering. That, of course, means an agenda. But another way to think about this planning is to establish standard routines that participants can count on at each meeting.

One routine we’ve used is Connections, a short activity that starts each meeting. Since study groups often meet at the end of a teaching day, participants’ minds are on the high and low points of the day. The routine of Connections provides a predictable bridge from the teaching day to the professional learning. It is also a routine that invites everyone’s voice to join the conversation within the first few minutes. This activity provides a transition from the busyness of teaching into the reflective time of the study group. Typically 10 minutes long, Connections is an opportunity for people to mentally shift gears. The rules for Connections are quite simple:

• This is a time to talk – or not to talk.  If you choose to talk, you an tell a story about the previous evening, explain what’s on your mind at this moment, or simply talk about your children’s latest antics.

• Don’t speak unless you want to.

• Listen to what others have to say, but do not respond.  This is not a time for a conversation but a time to share – or not share – a thought about your thinking.

• You may only speak once until everyone in the group has spoken.

• Silence is fine.  You might want to read for a bit, take a minute or two to jot down some thoughts in your journal, or reflect on your day.

• Our agendas tend to reflect the routines that support us in doing good collaborative thinking.  Here is an agenda we’ve used often:

• Connections

• Follow-up:  Discussion of what participants tried with their students based on the last discussion.

• Text-based discussion of the reading.  (You might use generic structures…or specific questions…)

• Priming the pump:  A short discussion or reflection that “primes the pump” for the upcoming reading so that participants think about the big ideas in the chapters ahead.

The Four As Protocol
This is a text-based protocol – mentioned above as part of the agenda for a study group meeting.  There are many other protocols for discussing a text and at least as many for discussing ideas of issues, teacher work, and student work.  This protocol can be modified by number and letter.  Instead of Four As, it could be Three Cs or Five Rs, with words chosen accordingly.

Prior to the discussion, everyone reads the chapter and answers each of the following questions of the four As.  Of course, the answer is based on the ideas in the reading:

• Assume: What do the writes assume to be true of you as readers?
• Agree: What do you agree with?
• Argue: What do you want to argue with?
• Aspire: What do you aspire to?

The Four As become the basis of the discussion.