“Tracking the brain: teaching thinking through writing.”

“Tracking the brain: teaching thinking through writing.” -or- “Go ahead, tell your students to listen to the voices inside their heads!”

Rachel Rawlings 6-12 Language Arts Rawlingra@aol.com www.rawlingra.wordpress.com

“The Brain—is wider than the Sky—” -Emily Dickinson

*ACTIVITY* • Write about a time when you had a dialogue in your head while reading. What were you reading? Were you talking with yourself? The book? • You have 5 minutes to write. • Share your writing with 2 people at your table. • You have 2-3 minutes to share.

Moves Good Readers Make • The moves that good readers make are very similar to the moves good writers make. It is no accident that most good writers are also great readers. • Chances are, you were able to easily recall a time when you had a “conversation” with a text. You might also have similar dialogues with yourself or your imaginary audience while you write. Now-- how we can help students gain the confidence and self-awareness to approach their reading and writing as a rhetorical process (like we already do)?

The Thinking/Writing Connection • “We think only through the medium of words.” • “Learning to think requires frequent, deliberate practice.” • “Students need practice with both the process of thinking and the product (language).” -Terry Roberts & Laura Billings (2008) “Thinking is Literacy, Literacy Thinking” Educational Leadership, Vol. 65, No. 5

The Thinking/Writing Connection • “Learning is a consequence of thinking.” • “Effective thinkers make their thinking visible, meaning they externalize their thoughts through speaking, writing, drawing, or some other method.” • “They [effective thinkers] can then direct and improve those thoughts.” -Ron Ritchhart & David Perkins (2008) “Making Thinking Visible” Educational Leadership, Vol. 65., No.5

What this means for us… • If our goal is to help students become better readers, writers, and thinkers, then we must provide instruction that allows them to work confidently with a complex system (language) by evaluating and analyzing how they interact with that system.

*ACTIVITY* • Read your copy of “Happy Endings” by Margaret Atwood. • Use the Thought Tracking handout to record your thoughts while thinking. • Try to capture in writing the thoughts that pop into your head while reading.

*ACTIVITY* • After you are finished reading, analyze your thought tracking sheets. Write briefly (approx. 1/2 pg.) about what and how you were thinking during reading. • What do you notice about your thoughts during reading?

Thought Tracking Clarified • It is important to teach students how to read language prior to expecting them to explain and manipulate language. • “Thought Tracking” provides a tool to help decode a text while providing practice in thinking and writing about a text.

The thinking behind “Thought Tracking” Recording your thoughts while reading makes the process of decoding language visible. • “Fostering thinking requires making it visible.” (Ritchhart & Perkins 58) If you are able to write about your thinking, you will be able to explain and manipulate language in a new way.

The serious consequences of making thinking visible… • “Classrooms become more learning-oriented rather than work-oriented”. (Marshall 1988) • “Students who previously believed that they lacked a voice or that their ideas weren’t valued, including students with learning disabilities, participate more actively and confidently.” (Richart, Palmer, Church, and Tishman 2006)

*ACTIVITY* • Check out my students’ brains! In your reading groups, look at the student work. What do you notice about their thinking? How is their Thought Tracking similar or different than what you did earlier? Circle your favorite “thoughts” from students. What did you learn about that student from that thought?

*ACTIVITY* • Discuss these questions with your group: Could you tell which students were engaged in the reading? What could you tell about students’ abilities based on their work?

Stretching the mind (other ways to use Thought Tracking) • Use thought tracking to design writing assignments (e.g. essay questions) and class activities. I used what I learned from Thought Tracking to create a “Billy Comes to Valleywood” drama activity. • Use Thought Tracking as a formative assessment to gauge comprehension of a text. This often eliminates the need for reading quizzes. • Use Thought tracking to assess writing skills. I decided to review punctuation through a mini-lesson after viewing several errors in Thought Tracking.

Stretching the mind (other ways to use Thought Tracking) • Use Thought Tracking with a variety of texts (poetry, short story, song lyrics, television, and movie) to emphasize critical literacy skills. • Ask students to role play or imagine what a character in a story might write down in a Thought Tracking square to deepen thinking about characters.

*ACTIVITY* • Choose a partner from within your reading group. • With your partner come up with two different ways to use Thought Tracking in your classroom. • Be as specific as possible! Be prepared to share your ideas.

In their words…writing about Thought Tracking “Actually, I learned a lot by thought tracking. I learned more about the characters of the book and all of the book itself. But sometimes get distracting when they talk about the non-interesting parts, like when the author talks about walking through the valley. That is kind of boring.” -Tyler

In their words…writing about Thought Tracking “No, I didn’t learn about how you think. I think I just had thinking thoughts.” -Myrline

In their words…writing about Thought Tracking “I learned about how I think when I read. I learned that when I read I really start thinking about whats going to happen next.” -Quantia

In their words…writing about Thought Tracking “Thought-tracking--to me it just helped me remember what I just read better. It helps because if the teacher ask you a question you will be able to answer it.” -Keohn

Why Metacognition Works • “Learning to think begins with recognizing how we are thinking…” • “Skillful thinkers engage in an internal mental dialogue that helps them decide on intelligent actions.” • Metacognition requires employment of a wide variety of knowledge and skills. (Emotions, ideas, thoughts, beliefs, inferences, etc. ) Arthur L. Costa (2008) “The Thought-Filled Curriculum”. Educational Leadership, Vol. 65., No. 5.

Don’t forget YOUR brain! • Modeling your own thought process while reading and writing is a crucial piece of this activity. • If we expect students to develop thinking routines we must show them that we have thinking routines. • I model Thought Tracking by using an overhead. I write down my thoughts in complete sentences, as I expect students to do.

Final Thoughts(A boring title, I know, but it just fits the topic!) I get to know my students in such rich ways when I give them space to voice their thoughts and opinions. For me, strategies like Thought Tracking accomplish something that can’t always be measured. I hope to continue to discover activities that encourage my students to be curious and creative about their own thinking.

“Not all thinking involves the solution of problems.” -Mihaly Csikzentmihalhyi

“Tracking the brain: teaching thinking through writing.”