Handling T4 Resistance
-Kay Cole
One of
the most common points of resistance that we encounter from students is from
the metacognitive routine of "talking to the text". At the beginning
of this school year, I was forced to confront my own perceptions of this
obstacle when I read in a student's Personal Reading History that she perceived
the act of "talking to the text" as a hindrance to her love of
reading. She went on to describe how she felt that being required to write
something on each line interrupted her flow of thought. I utilize
"talking to the text" as one method for students to engage in
metacognitive thinking and make their thinking visible regularly, so this
really made me stop and consider the source of this student's perception.
Why would
a student feel this way? How could I both honor the student's experience, while
also helping her to see the value in showing one's thinking? Below is the
response that I wrote to her:
Student,
Thanks for
sharing. In the coming year, I will be asking you to make your thinking visible
to me at certain times for important passages of text. However, I don't want
this to be a hindrance, but a help. It will have a purpose (sometimes chosen by
me, sometimes chosen by you) and the goal will be to consider the reading in a
way that deepens your understanding or helps you perceive in a new way. If this
becomes a hindrance, let's chat so that we can find a way to make this type of
assignment useful for you as a learner and useful for me in understanding your
thought processes.
Mrs. Cole
At the beginning
of my Reading Apprenticeship journey, I thought that perhaps oversaturation of
methods utilized across content areas was the challenge, but now that I have
traveled down the RA road a bit, I suggest that the dilemma is less about
oversaturation, and more about clarification of purpose. We do not claim that
students are ever "oversaturated" on reading or writing - yet,
students engage in these activities in all content area classrooms every day.
Thinking and demonstrating thinking, in addition to reading and writing, are
keys to student learning, so I had to confront why a student may not see the
value in this particular endeavor, and work actively to address the challenge.
In
confronting, questioning, and revising my own practice, I have developed some
"rules" for myself when assigning a T4:
1) Always
set a clear purpose: After "talking to the text" is introduced
and students understand the concept of metacognitive conversation and have had
the opportunity to practice a few times, I set a clear purpose for why we are
engaging with the text in this way. The purpose either connects directly to
something that students are about to learn, reinforces something already
learned, or acts as a scaffold for a future authentic assessment such as a
project or essay.
2) Always
communicate the purpose to students (this is the piece that I struggled with
the most): Students must be reminded each time that they embark on this
kind of deep metacognitive activity that the purpose is to deepen
understanding, help them break apart text to increase comprehension, or to help
them with a next step. I find that now, each and every time I assign a T4, I
find myself saying "Remember - we don't talk to the text just for the sake
of writing something on paper, but to help us ___________"
3) Always
use the T4 for another larger end goal - it is the path, not the end: The
T4 is not an end in and of itself - it is a scaffold for the metacognitive
conversation. It must provide students with a content conduit into something
else (a discussion, an essay, a project, pre-cursor or post-cursor to research
into a selected topic, etc.)
