Your voice in print - A teacher workshop

My dream to bring staffs of two of my observations schools was foiled by what is turning into a month-long teacher strike. Fortunately, I was still able to run a day-long workshop with the staff of the private school, Pequeño Sol.

We spent the first half of the day looking at the national communication standards for primary grades. Teachers shared some of my confusion produced by the ambiguity of some of the standards.

Teachers read the standards and noted words or phrases that were unclear. One standard requires 6-8 year olds
to "Understand the importance of communicating efficiently when explaining their ideas and arguments and when
presenting information." What does it mean to communicate efficiently? What would be the criteria to determine
if someone has communicated efficiently? How can we know when a child understands the importance of
communicating efficiently?

Then, teachers discussed these ambiguities.In 4th-6th grade, students are supposed to be able to "Distinguish the style, register, and tone according to the context, the audience, and the needs." Do they know what register and tone are? Do teachers know what these terms mean? 

Most teachers were not familiar with the communication standards and appreciated the opportunity to look at them in-depth.
While in the US (at least at my school), we seem to spend a lot more time deconstructing standards for planning purposes, I doubt that many teachers are familiar with the speaking standards in the US either. 

After looking at the standards, teachers had a chance to envision (enlisten??) what those skills would look like with children in their own classes. They acted out scenarios and filled in a chart of expected language for each standard. We also talked about the many categories of oral language - spontaneous vs. prepared, group discussion vs. single presenter, speaking to make meaning vs speaking to inform.

After a food break, teachers started the work of looking at transcripts. A major difference between spoken and written word is that speech is fleeting. This chance to revisit classroom discourse proved enlightening (and entertaining) for many of the teachers. As a teacher, it is so easy to ignore or not even hear a thoughtful student comment. It is easy to make nonsensical statements, try to lead students to answers that are not clear, throw a lengthy series of questions at a group of students without providing time to respond. The purpose of this session was not to cast judgment on teachers. In fact, it wasn't about teachers at all. We were looking for strong examples of STUDENT language.

Example of third grader "efficiently communicating" an argument: 

Deberíamos cuidar nuestro planeta porque la basura hace que se quemen los bosques, la selva, y todo eso. Y no solo, pues nos afecta a nosotros sino también a los animales. (We should take care of our planet because trash makes fires in the forest, the jungle, and all of this. And, well, it doesn't only affect us, but also the animals.)

 

With over fifty pages of transcription, they weren't able to highlight every example of strong oral language, but they seemed to agree that it was a valuable process. I hope to be able to work through the process again.