Activate student curiosity and writing through image-based inquiry.

​We live in a visual culture. 

Scrolling through images has become the air most of us breathe — and for many of us, it’s the first way we take in new information. Often, images hook us, prompting a pause long enough to explore further. Sometimes, they even lead us to seek additional context.

Harnessing the power of images as a teaching tool is not new. Yet revisiting this strategy can be especially helpful in our visually saturated, complex classrooms. Images offer accessible entry points for a wide range of learners, spark curiosity, and can support skill-building across disciplines.

Recently, in my coaching work at The Brooklyn School for Math and Research (BSMART) in Bushwick, Brooklyn, we designed and implemented a workshop series inspired by the New Visions High Schools District Literacy Influencer series facilitated by CPET. This district-wide series offers experiences with a variety of literacy routines that teacher-participants adjust, implement, and turnkey at their school sites. At BSMART, we saw an opportunity to leverage the structure of this series to meet the needs of our multilingual, visually rich classrooms. We chose to center our work on why and how images are powerful learning tools, because images can “speak” across languages and learning styles, offering all students accessible entry points for engagement.

My partner in the work, Malik Bolden, a graduate of the Neuroscience Department at Teachers College, Columbia University, offered us a peek at the science of neurolearning behind images as a learning tool. 

In brief, based on the principles of neurolearning, images support learning in many ways:

1. Brain Efficiency and Processing: Research from cognitive neuroscience (e.g., by John Sweller, Richard Mayer, and Allan Paivio) indicates that the brain is inherently better at processing images than raw text because images are processed in the visual cortex, which is highly specialized for interpreting visual data. When you add visuals to a lesson, you activate areas of the brain associated with recognition, emotional response, and memory recall.
2. Memory Retention: Allan Paivio’s Dual-Coding Theory posits that the brain processes verbal and visual information through two distinct channels—one for words and one for images. When both types of information are used together, it helps create stronger, more interconnected pathways in the brain, and therefore stronger memories. Learners are able to recall and process material better when both text and images are present, rather than just one or the other.
3. Making the Abstract Concrete: Images make abstract ideas more tangible by providing concrete visual representations that are more easily understood. For example, a diagram of the water cycle or human anatomy can make it much clearer than just a paragraph of text describing it.  Infographics such as charts and diagrams simplify complex concepts by breaking them into parts. 
4. Encourage Active Learning: Looking at images can prompt students to make connections, ask questions, and engage with the content more actively. For example, a photo of a historical event might inspire students to wonder and explore the context or causes of that event.
5. Emotional Impact and Memory: John Medina, author of Brain Rules, explains that emotions play a large role in memory. Images can evoke emotional responses, making the content more memorable. For example, a powerful photo from history can trigger an emotional reaction that helps a student recall related facts and concepts later on. 

Images can be used intentionally at different moments in a lesson or unit to support engagement, understanding, and reflection. Below are three high-impact points where images can deepen learning across disciplines.

At BSMART, we began our workshop series by pairing images with the See, Think, Wonder protocol from Harvard’s Project Zero. This simple routine offers students accessible entry points into new topics by inviting them to observe closely, make meaning, and ask questions.

Teachers quickly noticed that See, Think, Wonder worked well for introducing concepts. Over time, however, they wanted students to think more deeply and produce more sustained, coherent writing. To support this shift, we experimented with layering prompts, expectations, and complementary strategies onto the protocol.

Below is one way See, Think, Wonder can grow from an observation routine into a tool for deeper thinking, writing stamina, and critical analysis.

Based on our explorations at BSMART so far, we’ve seen that starting with images — and intentionally layering protocols, questions, and clear expectations — can spark curiosity, deepen thinking, and support the development of critical thinking and writing skills across disciplines.

Images alone aren’t the magic; it’s how we structure students’ interactions with them that makes learning visible and accessible. We encourage you to experiment with these strategies in your own classroom to create meaningful entry points for every learner. We’d love to hear how it goes.

Turn the quiet left by phones into the productive noise of student talk, curiosity, and deep learning.

Our young people have been unwitting participants in a grand social experiment with technology — cell phones, social media, and more. Parents, teachers, and schools have been part of this experiment as well. Now, many of us are taking part in a new experiment to ban or restrict cell phones in schools. Most adults support the ban or restrictions, while some parents are concerned about being able to reach their children.  

A 2024 National Education Association (NEA) poll found that 90 percent of teachers support prohibiting student cellphone use during instructional hours. 75 percent favor extending restrictions to the entire school day. At this point, over half the states are requiring districts to come up with a policy, while a handful of states have outright banned cell phone use in schools. 

With fewer distractions, students are not just more focused — they have more space and energy to engage in meaningful conversations with peers. Early reports from teachers and administrators confirm that students seem more focused in class and that they are interacting more in the cafeteria. Principal John Murphy of Walt Whitman High School on Long Island attests: “You can hear the tone in the energy of the classroom, and more importantly in the lunchroom, there is more social interaction because they can’t bury themselves in their phones.”

In recent coaching sessions with early-career middle and high school teachers, we talked about the impact of the cell phone restrictions on students and we planned for a classroom without the distraction of notifications and the weight of a cell phone in a pocket. Our conversations led me to feel hopeful about new opportunities to increase not only students’ focus on their school work, but a focus on each other — meaning more productive and positive interactions, and hopefully an improved classroom culture.

To help teachers make the most of this opportunity, I revisited a few simple protocols and routines that I have enjoyed using in my own classroom and that I have seen work for harnessing students' natural social energy. Thank you to the teachers in Brooklyn and Queens whom I work with for bringing these routines to life in their classrooms and inspiring me to share them here! 

​Reciprocal Teaching

• What it is: A cooperative learning strategy in which students are in groups of four, with each taking a turn leading one reading skill: predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing. 
• Why to use it: Students are asked to utilize a variety of literacy skills that build reading comprehension. Each student takes a turn as a leader, building collaboration skills between peers.
• How to use it: Try practicing and modeling the process with students before they use it independently, with each student getting to try out each role with a simple, short text.  

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​Four "A"s Text Protocol

• What it is: A reading protocol with a structured discussion method that guides participants to analyze and annotate a text by focusing on four key areas: the author's assumptions, aspects they agree with, part of the text they argue with, and parts they aspire to or would like to take action on.
• Why to use it: This activity promotes critical thinking and collaborative learning while making comprehension and interpretation visible to both students and teachers.
• How to use it: Ask students to read and annotate the text individually, then guide them to share their notes in small groups, discussing each category one at a time and building collective understanding through structured conversation.

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Code 10 Protocol

• What it is: A cooperative strategy where students read and annotate a text independently using common codes and/or a purpose for their reading. After reading and annotating their texts, students join in a group of any size that works (generally 2-4 work best) and have a 10-minute conversation by taking turns discussing each students’ annotations, one code at a time. 
• Why use it: While this protocol is structured and creates accountability, it also offers students choice and the opportunity to share their own thinking. Code 10 also asks students to read and annotate using a variety of literacy skills that can be adjusted based on the purpose for their reading. 
• How to use it: Decide which annotations you would like students to use based on the purpose for reading the text. Offer students adequate time to read individually and annotate their texts. Then, organize them into groups of three or four to discuss their annotations.

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Placemat Technique

• What it is: A cooperative learning strategy using a collective “placemat” placed in the middle of a group of students to organize the discussion. The placemat is generally a simple template on paper with a square drawn in the middle. Students share their responses to a key question (which is written or posted in the square in the middle of the placemat). by adding their response to the corner of the placemat closest to their seat. 
• Why use it: Students at all levels can use this concrete strategy easily. Each student brings their response to the mat, which creates equal tasks for each student. This strategy is highly adaptable, with students using the placemat to compare responses or solutions to a problem.
• How to use it: Divide students into small groups (ideally four). Have each student write ideas in their personal section, then guide the group to discuss and agree on a consensus to record in the center, and optionally post the placemat for sharing or future reference.

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Stick It Together

• What it is: Similar to the Placemat Technique, this is a collaborative learning strategy where students write individual responses to a prompt on sticky notes, then place them on a shared area to compare, discuss, and synthesize ideas. 
  
• Why use it: This protocol encourages participation, critical thinking, and consensus-building as students work together to develop a collective response. Students are asked to evaluate each others’ responses, taking their thinking to a higher level. 
  
• How to use it: Have students individually write ideas on sticky notes, place them on the shared "mat", discuss as a group, select or synthesize the strongest response as a “best answer,” and share it with the class.
  

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Think-Pair-Share

• What it is: This is one of the simplest routines, but I had to include it because it is so useful with any age group and across all disciplines. It might just be the most manageable way to get all students to speak in class. This discussion strategy asks students to first respond to a prompt in writing, then share their ideas with a partner before contributing to a whole-class conversation.
• Why use it: Especially for younger grades or quick questions in the classroom, this offer students a little more wait time or think time. The approach builds confidence, encourages participation, and leads to richer, more thoughtful discussions.
• How to use it: Have students first respond to a prompt individually (writing or drawing for younger students), then pair up to discuss their ideas, and finally reconvene the class so pairs can share insights with everyone. This structure can be applied at multiple points in a lesson—before new material, after a text or video, or prior to starting an assignment—to encourage reflection, conversation, and idea development.

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Turn and Talk

• What it is: A structured partner discussion strategy where students first reflect individually, then take turns sharing their ideas with a partner, building confidence and encouraging respectful academic dialogue.
• Why use it: Supports low-stakes thinking and communication, strengthens relationships between students, and promotes thoughtful, collaborative discussions.
• How to use it: Pose a reflection question and have students write or note their responses. Students then share their thoughts in pairs, taking turns as 1st and 2nd responder, and optionally share a summary with another pair or the whole class.

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​Without phones buzzing in their pockets, students have the focus to read more closely, talk to one another more authentically, and engage with ideas more deeply. And, you have space to try structuring collaboration to invite curiosity and amplify student talk. This newfound quiet creates space to structure collaboration, spark curiosity, and amplify the productive “noise” of student talk and learning.

Even just a few minutes of writing can spark focus, empathy, and emotional growth.

​When we envision social-emotional learning, we may think of young people learning to regulate their emotions, maintain positive relationships, and boost their empathy or compassion for others. In turn, we may think that in order to uplift it in our classrooms and schools, we need to incorporate new curricula and teaching. But what if it was as simple as just making more space and time for more expressive writing? 

In our work at CPET, we often (if not always!) begin our own professional meetings with Writing for Full Presence, a brief yet highly impactful activity where we are given time to simply write out everything that may be on our minds, so that we can start our time together fully present. The grace, space, and dignity afforded in these moments can’t be overstated: we’re given the gift of a few moments to clear our heads of every human thing that happened to us before we got there, and in doing so, the fullness of our humanness is seen, accounted for, and given room to breathe.

This is one way of bringing clarity, focus, and humanity, with writing serving as social-emotional learning, and here’s another: when I was a teacher, I practiced Linda Trichter Metcalfe and Tobin Simon’s Proprioceptive Writing with my students at the behest of a very wonderful ELA colleague at my school who touted the benefits and wanted all young people to experience it. Known to boost attention, confidence, empathy, relational capacity, and emotional health, my high school students looked forward to it as a brief but important daily practice (it also made them stronger writers)! The reset provided by 5-7 minutes of a quiet space where young people can write about whatever they choose (in a day often without much choice, and often largely otherwise dictated by other people) was invaluable. 

​There are many other simple incorporations of expressive writing: writing yourself a letter (about the start of the year, the end of the year, an upcoming goal, or anything at all), keeping a journal, or even just having choice in how you write what you’re learning about in class. All can make way for greater social and emotional health and wellbeing. 

So, school leaders and classroom teachers, consider making time for expressive writing by:

• Setting aside anywhere from 3-10 minutes of class time at least 2 or 3 times weekly
• Selecting a practice, like Writing for Full Presence or Proprioceptive Writing, or
• Selecting an activity, like writing yourself a letter or writing a journal entry, or
• Offering a choice in how students complete a writing assignment about the content
• Giving space to your students to use how they see fit to regulate their emotions, manage their relationships, or boost their empathy.

Offering a little time back to our young people and asking them to use it in writing can result in enumerable glorious benefits for emotional health. How simple and how powerful to know that social emotional learning is available to us all in the tiny but mighty act of asking folks to write! 

When the lesson hooks but the reading stalls, these moves help students jump in.

I’m in a 9th grade science class and it is first period. Students have trickled in and the teacher allows them to finish their breakfasts as they begin class. The teacher opens class with a short, engaging video about rising ocean temperatures, and the potential effects of rising seawaters, even right here in the Bronx. Students comment on how crazy it would be if parts of New York City were underwater. We pull up a map to see how far inland our school in the South Bronx is compared with the coasts of New York City, to give students a sense of the coastland and interior parts of the city, and how far inland the seawaters could potentially reach depending on the rising ocean temperature.

​Their interest is piqued, and the teacher has officially launched the Weather and Climate unit in the Earth and Space Sciences. We are off to a good start for this class, despite how depressing it is to look at climate change from a scientific perspective.  

The teacher feels strongly that students lose focus and attention when they are on their laptops, so he provides a physical handout of the reading on this topic, along with a few questions that are based on the reading. The questions vary in terms of being “right there” questions and questions that are more thought-provoking and analytical.

​Here’s when I notice class starts to shift a bit.

The teacher has distributed all of the handouts. The breakfasts have been completed and cereal boxes and tin foil wrappers have been thrown out, so there are no distractions.

But students are doing anything but reading.

​Two students ask to go to the bathroom. Another student puts her head down. Another student starts poking a classmate with his elbow and then pretends he didn’t when he’s asked to stop. One student starts rifling through her bag looking for something. You get the idea…one student is looking at the reading, but just looking — his eyes are not moving he is just staring at the page. Students are looking for ways to do anything but read the text on climate change, a topic that a minute ago they were so curious about!  

I visit with the teacher, who is taking attendance and fielding a few latecomers.

“It looks like they are having a hard time getting started on this reading. Maybe you should remind them to annotate the reading or something, so they can stay more focused? Or start them off on the reading as a class?”  

“I’ve taught them so many times how to annotate, so they should know what to do.”

“Hmm, but I don’t really see them annotating right now, do you?”
 
At the risk of being a nudge, I feel compelled to point this out as the students were not moving forward with the reading and seemed stuck. He agreed that he should say something.

“Okay everyone, you all should be annotating. Take out a pen or pencil and annotate like we have done before.”

This evolves into several students raising their hand because they need a pen, and the teacher lamenting over lending out pens and never getting them back. A quarter of the period has passed, and no one is reading or learning more about weather and climate. 

Once everyone had a pen or pencil, the class appeared more settled, and their attention was back on the papers. What I noticed though, is most students jumped right to answering the questions instead of reading first. I wondered, is that okay? Is the purpose of this class to answer the questions, or to learn about the content through reading, and to use the questions as a check for understanding?  

When I met with the teacher later, we discussed again how he had shown them how to annotate a few times — I was even there for a lesson where he modeled annotating on the projector! So why isn’t this clicking?
 
He has shown them what to do, but when it’s their turn to actively read and annotate, there is a disconnect. 

Annotation is not a magical skill, but it is a way to encourage students to read actively and stay focused on the reading. This is increasingly important as content area standardized tests include more and more reading passages, and if students can understand the reading, then they can have access to being a more successful student. Aside from assessments, exposing students to reading in all subject areas and asking them to practice active reading skills can increase their comprehension skills, which is a building block for critical thinking. 

Of course, asking high school students to read anything is often met with a healthy dose of pushback. Americans read less and less each year. According to the National Literacy Institute, in 2024, 54% of adults had a literacy level below sixth grade, and 60% of behavioral issues in school happen when students are asked to read because of their low literacy skills. But while we might be met with resistance, this does not mean we give up on the skill of teaching reading and annotating; we have to keep at it, be creative, and continue to encourage students to actively read.

The frustrating aspect of this particular lesson is that the pre-reading hook was wonderful! Students were engaged by the climate change videos and trying to identify our school and places in their neighborhood within the sea rising graph. Even with their raised interest, you could almost hear a collective whomp whomp when the reading and questions handout were distributed.

​So what can we do to ease this transition, even after the pre-reading hook is so effective? Reading is too important of a life skill to give up on; beyond state and national assessments, it is a skill that can open doors and empower people. 

Meeting with this teacher after class, we discussed the following moves the next time he starts with a great hook and transitions into a content-heavy reading: 

1. If students aren’t engaging with the reading, it’s important to notice this and take action. When students all suddenly need to use the bathroom or put their heads down or start trying to poke their neighbors, it’s time to regroup and redirect.
2. Students may need help getting started. If they do, maybe read aloud and think aloud the very first sentence to get them started. “It looks like we are having a hard time getting started. I’m going to show you how I started off reading this passage and what I jotted down in the margins, and why I jotted it down...” Share your thinking and explore how the title of the text and the image (if there is any) will help you make predictions or ask questions about the text. While reading the first sentence or two, share any questions, connections or wonderings you have just from that first sentence. This will show your students what actively reading this text looks like, and this brief model may be able to get them started. 
3. Strong readers create a purpose for reading so they know what to look for and notice as they read. It might be worth checking with students what they think they will be looking for or noticing in the reading before they begin, and what keywords are associated with that lens. In the earth science class I was visiting, for instance, students could have adopted a lens in the reading for what causes climate change, and how can individuals slow the process or prevent it?  
4. If you notice students are beginning to read and annotate, take a moment for positive narrations, such as, “I love how Damian is writing in the margins and using arrows to make connections to other sentences and images.
5. If students are stuck and not reading, open it up to pair read. There is no age limit to pair reading, which includes taking turns reading the text aloud, discussing it by restating what was understood, and/or asking each other to clarify any confusing moments. Sheridan Blau, one of our esteemed professors in the English Education department at Teachers College, reminds us that “reading is a social activity.” When students engage with a text and help each other intellectually make meaning, they will practice and grow their literacy and thinking skills.  

Even when a lesson starts off with deep curiosity, the transition to reading may still be bumpy. Address this with your students, and try any of the strategies listed above. We want our students to be active and thoughtful citizens, so let’s continue building their literacy skills, even if it requires some reteaching or regrouping. Just as it is worth combating climate change and making adjustments to mitigate this issue, practicing and improving students’ reading in all subject areas is worth fighting for. 

Creativity is a mindset, and every student can tap into it — no special talent required.

When we picture creativity, we often imagine talented dancers floating across a stage or gifted painters filling a wall with flashes of incredible color. Our CPET team believes that creativity is the beautiful capacity to make something from nothing, and our research-based Global Mindset Framework — which explores 21st century skills across five mindsets, each articulating capacities that research suggests will be the most valuable and valued skills in the future — centers a Creative mindset as one of five essential areas to nurture in students. 

All classrooms can be hubs of creativity when we reframe being creative as using our mindset, or how we’re seeing things, as opportunities to make something new. If this is exciting to you and you’re already doing it, share widely with your colleagues to make your practices more common! If this is new to you or sounds challenging to include in your every day, here are a few simple, practical ways to get creative in your classroom. 

​Most content areas involve some kind of visuals to examine, and Visual Thinking Strategies offers a quick, clean framework that sparks an open-ended discussion about an image that often generates ideas among a group of students. Put up an image, and ask the three questions below (with wait time and opportunities for young people to respond in between):

• What is going on in this picture?
• What do you see that makes you say that?
• What more can we find? 

This simple strategy has young people making claims (what’s going on in this picture?) and supporting them with evidence (what do you see that makes you say that?) every time you use it. Even more — it encourages divergent thinking and alternative interpretations (what more can we find?) in an open-ended way that keeps students excitedly talking until you choose to wrap up the discussion. 

​Agency is a powerful motivator for young people. Menus, or Choice Boards, provide opportunities for students to select how they’d like to show what they know. For instance, after reading a novel together as a class, a Choice Board might include options such as:

• Writing an essay
• Creating a Canva presentation
• Eulogizing one of the characters
• Writing a letter to the author
• Engaging in a Fishbowl discussion with other students
• Creating a video about the novel

or many, many other creative ways to demonstrate learning. 

A modification of Choice Boards, Menus, allows you to keep the traditional assessment core, if you need everyone to complete one common assessment. In this modification, everyone needs to choose the main dish, or the entree, but there is choice for the appetizer and dessert. For example, if, after reading a novel, it’s important that everyone complete an essay about it, make the essay the entree and allow choice in smaller assessments, like sketching your favorite scene from the novel or painting your favorite setting as an appetizer and making a soundtrack to accompany the novel or dressing and acting as the author as a dessert. Choice Boards encourage engagement, autonomy, and creativity and open up ways of showing mastery. 

​One great way to learn an entire toolkit of these strategies is through our Literacy Unbound initiative, which works with students and teachers to reimagine challenging, classic texts through multiple modalities, allowing greater access to and understanding of texts.

A few tools we use which you can try right now: 

• Character Panels: students act as/play various characters in the novel (or historical time period, etc.) and interact with each other in character, and/or sit at the front of the room and answer questions from the readers (other students/the audience).
• Polaroids: students create an image of a concept or process (in any subject area!) in small groups, entering the image one person at a time, so the picture develops slowly (like a Polaroid) and the observers/audience (other students) caption it, or ask questions.
• Teach Someone Else: students create a short skit through which they teach key concepts and/or vocabulary of a given topic (in any subject area). It’s especially helpful if students imagine their audience for the skit as younger students who need to learn about the topic since this prompts them to distill and streamline what might otherwise be complicated to understand (bonus: if you have access to younger students, they can actually go and teach them the concept or topic)!

​Creativity is a process of using our original thought or our imaginations to make something new. You don't need special gifts or talents — everyone can be creative! In our classrooms, we can nurture this belief by giving students space to explore their natural creativity, helping them develop skills that prepare them for the 21st century.

Capture each student’s thinking with fast, effective formative checks.

​In the article Designing Great Hinge Questions, Dylan Thomas outlines four principles that make Hinge Questions — questions that serve as checks for understanding, often at a lesson’s midpoint — meaningful and effective. 

To me, the principle of “elicit a response from every student” really stands out, both for its importance and the challenge it presents. Even the most veteran teachers amongst us have fallen into the trap of hearing from a few enthusiastic students in response to a question or task, and thinking, “okay great, everyone is with me!” It can be easy to conflate the responses of a few with the status of the entire class. 

But, how do we truly hear from everyone, without wasting the entire class period? Balancing this need to capture all students with efficiency is tricky. Here are four tools — from low tech to high tech — that invite all students to opt in:

​How it works: When the hinge question is in a multiple choice format, students use their fingers to indicate the choice that best answers the question. For example, students hold up one finger to indicate choice one, two fingers to indicate choice two, etc. 

Benefits: This method requires no additional materials and can be implemented in a short amount of time. This is a great option for when teachers realize mid-lesson that they are unsure of students’ readiness for what is coming next in the plan, and they want to facilitate a spur-of-the moment check for understanding. 

Potential drawbacks: With this method, there are limitations to the type of question that can be posed. Furthermore, there is no record of student responses to which you can refer later (unless the teacher is taking notes, which can slow things down). 

​How it works: Each student is given a Post-it note, on which they write their response to a hinge question. Students can either put the Post-it note in a visible place on their desk, which the teacher(s) circulate to read, or students may place their post-it note on the board or in a predetermined place in the room. 

Benefits: This is a great low-tech option for when a hinge question is best answered with a sentence or two (rather than a closed response format such as multiple choice). Some students might appreciate the tactile nature of the approach, as well as the opportunity for movement when used in combination with a “parking lot.” The manipulative nature of Post-its can also be of great benefit from the teacher’s perspective, especially if students’ responses are being used to create strategic groups; the post-its can be moved around in order to visualize who might benefit from working together. 

Potential drawbacks: Some teachers might find it overwhelming to organize and make sense of potentially 20-30 individual pieces of paper on the spot, especially if they are the sole educator in the room. 

​How it works: Within Google Workspace, teachers can use a range of question formats (short answer, multiple choice, likert scale, etc.) 

Benefits: The technology makes it very easy to quickly recognize whole class trends through visual representation of the data, while simultaneously allowing for the collection of individualized student data (as long as there is a question asking for their name!). Data is also automatically archived if you wish to review it again after class. 

Potential drawbacks: Google Forms are a great, straightforward choice if students are already accessing technology during the lesson. However, if it is the only digital element of the lesson, the time it can take to start up devices and get to the link might be too disruptive to the flow of the learning. Same goes for tools like Formative, Nearpod, and Peardeck. 

​How it works: Plickers is a free online platform designed specifically for this type of formative assessment. Teachers use Plickers to prepare and present their hinge questions, and assign each student a card number. Students are then provided with a card (which can be printed for free from the website) and answer the question through the orientation of the card (each orientation corresponds with one of the answer choices). 

Benefits: Like the other digital tools mentioned, Plickers updates teachers on student responses in real time, and also captures individual student data to be considered later on. However, a unique benefit to Plickers is that while it seems high tech it actually integrates more seamlessly into a low-tech environment; students don’t need their own device. 
 
Potential drawbacks: To new users, the system can seem complicated at first, and learning and managing a new set of procedures can be overwhelming for students and teachers alike. As with any new tool or technology, teachers can expect a bit of a learning curve. 

​While Thomas’s Hinge Question principles are widely applicable, there is no single “best” way to check for everyone’s understanding; the right tool depends on the moment, the content, and the students in front of you. Whether it's a quick finger vote or more tech-based tool like Plickers, what matters most is the commitment to hearing from every student. Not only does this help us gather better data, but students get the message that their thinking matters to you. 

Turn writing tasks into mirrors where students see themselves.

Why did a standard analytical prompt lead students to declare, "This is boring"? This article — the third in the Teaching Writing in the Age of Generative AI series —argues that voice and choice are essential because writing is a means of self-affirmation and identity construction, as articulated by scholars like Rudine Sims Bishop and Mary Ryan. Practical strategies include designing prompts that invite the self, offering a menu of modalities and genres, and using personal narrative to experiment with voice.

​“Analyze at least three author's choices and how they shape a theme in the text.”

Students nodded, recognizing the prompt. Some immediately sketched three boxes on their paper, planning to “fill in” the author’s choices they would explore.

Then, the inevitable: “This is boring.”

As a K-12 writing teacher, I sometimes feel that my curriculum's structure, while necessary for meeting standards like the Next Generation Standards, can at times guide students into rather narrow pathways. My internal monologue becomes so driven by these standards, unceasing: Well, I need to ensure students grasp figurative language so they can analyze authorial choices. That goal naturally calls for stronger close reading skills, and in order to close read then students will benefit from targeted vocabulary instruction, and to teach that I’ll need to…

In my effort to anticipate student needs, align to standards, and ensure skilled instruction, I can sometimes forget the actual student experience of reading and writing. Hearing, “This is boring,” was painful, yet it served as an important moment of reflection for me. “They’re right,” I realized. “This is boring.” If I was being honest, I dreaded grading those assignments before students even started writing them, anticipating checking off the same three literary devices repeatedly.

I'd find that initial prompt just as boring as my students do. I enjoy authors’ choices and themes most as they relate to me. An author who writes about love or loss, a dissolving friendship, a difficult social order, or a hopeful engagement with the natural world sparks my interest. I want to discuss and write about those pieces because they reflect myself or something that feels like it exists in my world. I want to explore my connection to the theme, how our world might benefit from it, and how I might adopt the author's choices in my own work. Writing itself becomes a place of agency and choice that lets me explore what I care about most.

Now, returning to my students who we left bored at the beginning of this article — imagine how different the writing process becomes when we pose this question:

“What’s one message the author communicates, and who in your life would benefit from hearing it? Write to whoever that is: yourself, your team, your friend group, or your school leadership. As you explain your thinking, include some of the author’s choices and how those help communicate the theme.”

This idea isn't new. Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop's famous "windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors" metaphor captures this perfectly:

​Writing that stems from an authentic prompt encourages us to imagine, reflect, and self-affirm. These invitations engage students because the individual both shapes and is called upon by the writing task.

Writing offers a pathway to explore and construct personal voice and identity. When we invite students to write from memory or personal narrative, they build authorship. They write from within, not just toward a grade, and learn to value their own perspective. If student writing sometimes lacks voice or sounds generic, the question becomes what and how we invite them to write. Does the prompt itself invite individual perspective?

I acknowledge that students still need to master the skills required by the first, more traditional prompt, especially for standardized assessments. Nonetheless, my revised prompt—which asks students to choose an audience and explain the message's relevance—still requires identifying and analyzing the author's choices. But it also invites student voices. While it can’t be every prompt, it can certainly be some. Perhaps most? 

Writing scholarship strongly supports this approach. Student motivation to write increases when they perceive relevance and have voice and choice (Pink, 2011). When students see a purpose beyond the teacher’s gradebook, they engage more deeply. Furthermore, Mary Ryan (2014) argues that teaching writing as a series of decisions about how to represent their subject matter and themselves through language helps shape and represent students’ identities. 

In the context of new technologies, recent studies involving generative AI, such as Chan & Hu (2023), show students’ perceived concerns about how AI might misrepresent their individual values and/or cause harm to their teacher-student relationships. This perception suggests that students themselves recognize writing as a place for personal value exploration and relational connection — for that reason, they worry about how generative AI might misrepresent them or the things they care about, negatively impacting their relationships with their teachers. 

In a time when many young people feel disempowered, writing remains one of the few places where they can explore their experiences, shape their narratives, and be heard. 

​How, then, do we support identity building as teachers of writing? How do we create student engagement and spark curiosity? How do we support students’ identity building through voice and choice? 

1. Design Prompts that Invite the Self
Consider: Am I creating opportunities for students to explore their own values and experiences in response to a text, rather than just summarizing it? Instead of asking students to analyze the setting's role in a story, I might ask: "Write about a place in your life where you felt the same sense of isolation or belonging that the main character felt. How did that place influence your choices? Connect that to the setting of this text." These prompts require analysis while grounding the response in the student's personal landscape.

2. Offer a Menu of Modalities and Genres for Response
Consider: How might I expand options beyond the five-paragraph essay to value choice in form? If an author's message is particularly impactful, a student might express their response best through a podcast script, a graphic novel panel, or a narrative poem. Allowing students to choose the medium based on their strengths and the message's nature validates their communication skills and encourages stylistic flexibility.

3. Use Personal Narrative and Experiment with Voice
Consider: How can I use personal narrative assignments as a laboratory for trying on different author's styles and voices? After reading a strong memoirist (like Kincaid or Sedaris), I ask students to retell a personal story twice: once in their natural voice and once "in the style of" the author they just read, focusing on devices like sentence length, humor, or tone. This active imitation helps students discover their own voice by showing what happens when they play with different authorial choices.

​The frustration I felt grading those three-box analysis prompts stemmed from their failure to recognize the student as an individual. When we reduce writing to a mechanical checklist, we disconnect it from identity, the very source of its power.

We can meet curriculum goals—analyzing craft, theme, and evidence—while empowering students to see themselves in the texts they read and write. As Rudine Sims Bishop reminds us, literature offers a mirror. Our pedagogy can ensure writing functions as a tool for self-authorship. By offering choices in prompt design, genre, and modality, we move beyond compliance. We ask students to invest their voice, experience, and perspective.

This investment is the personal rhythm that distinguishes human writing from AI-generated text. By prioritizing voice and choice, we not only boost motivation and engagement but also give students a vital platform to name their experiences and actively shape their narratives. The most meaningful writing education doesn't just teach how; it teaches students why their voice matters.
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What looks like distraction, silence, or over-questioning might actually be a student engaging — if we know where to look.

At a recent work event, my colleagues and I were asked to play a game to help us explore some concepts we had been reading about as a team. A variety of responses, from “Can’t wait!” to expressions that read “Do I really have to...” erupted as we went over to the area set up for play. We didn’t even make it through the very first rule before the designer was interrupted — “Wait I’m lost, explain it again?”

With each interruption, I grew more frustrated — why couldn’t they just listen and let us get through it once?! Wouldn’t that make it more understandable? Your questions might be answered later, why can’t you just be patient? Finally the game began, but the questions didn’t stop — “Am I doing it right?” chief among them.

The next week my mom visited, and I decided to ask her about that situation. I told her about my frustrations and concerns about how adults are afraid to engage. When I finally paused, she said “But what if that was what engagement looked like for them?”

As teachers we cannot help but bring our own ideas of what engagement can/will/must look like; not to mention admin, district leaders, parents! When those ideas, which become standards, are not met, we take action to fix that problem. But what if sometimes that problem behavior we think we see is actually the engagement we were looking for? While we cannot change the expectations put on us by other stakeholders of education, we can look for other signs that students are engaging and meet them there.

​Here are four types of students you might see engaging in your classroom and ways to connect with them. 

These students are exactly what many people think of when their hear “actively engaged.” They raise their hand to ask questions and answer questions you offer, diligently do their work.

Potential Pitfalls: They may end up dominating the conversation and your attention. They may disengage if they are bored or do not feel challenged. Ignoring their raised hands or ready answers may also cause them to shut down.

Tricks to Engage: When you see their hand raised, consider asking them to answer a part of your question rather than the whole thing. If you have the bandwidth, give them differentiated material at their level. Partner them with students that will challenge them, whether that is a student having difficulties that allows them to slow down and practice every step, or other engaged students who can go deeper into the material with them.

These students may appear at first to be disrupting the flow of the lesson, asking unnecessary questions, or impatient to get to work. However, this type of student is engaging through asking their questions. They worry that they might not understand if they do not ask now; that getting through the whole lesson and then asking will leave them totally lost.

Potential Pitfalls: They may end up dominating the conversation and your attention by slowing down the flow of the lessons. They may also ask questions that you will get to later in the lesson. If their questions are not answered, they may eventually shut down and disengage.

Tricks to Engage: Encourage a spirit of questioning in your classroom. On days when you must get through the lesson for whatever reason, encourage these students to write down every question they have, offering to answer them when there is an appropriate time. Instead of the open-ended option, “Does anyone have any questions?” which may make students feel uncomfortable to ask because of peer pressure, consider posing “What are three questions you can think to ask about what we just covered?” to encourage questioning as engagement.

These students may at first appear disengaged because of how little they speak in class. They do not raise their hand to volunteer answers or ask questions. They may not even have much to say when called upon. They may take active notes or they may not. Yet these students are engaged. They make active eye contact, and/or show other signs of active listening. They take time to think before responding, and may just need more time to process information before they form or share a thought.

Potential Pitfalls: These students may shut down if they are often forced to speak before they are ready. They may also shut down if they are repeatedly called out for disengagement despite knowing they are fully engaged.

Tricks to Engage: If you think a student might be disengaged in class, speaking to them privately to get a sense of what they are thinking about can be very helpful. Additionally, creating a ritual for sharing out can give these students time to prepare something to share. Encourage these students to write or talk out their thoughts so that you might follow along, especially if they are not yet taking notes.

These students may be sneaking glances at their phone or openly watching videos. They may be talking with their neighbor or surfing the web when their laptops are out. They may be making jokes or otherwise trying to distract others as well. The reasons for this are myriad — it could be issues at home, boredom, not understanding why they should care, desire for attention, etc. Yet even these students are engaged in the learning process because they are present. They are learning from you and your responses as well as your peers, whether they realize it or not.

Potential Pitfalls: For one reason or another these students have already shut down, and may seek to get others to do the same. Additionally, the reasons for this disengagement may have little to nothing to do with your classroom.

Tricks to Engage: First, remember that everyone has bad days. Maybe they just didn’t get enough sleep or had too much sugar. Give them grace and do your best to try to bring people back to task. If this is habitual, ask them questions to get to the heart of the matter. If it becomes clear something is going on, refer them to the school counselor. If they check out because of boredom, ask them how to help them engage. While you may not be able to do everything, even the simple act of hearing these students often helps them buy back into the classroom.

No student is ever just one of these — they might act one way in one class and differently in another. Sometimes they might switch between these roles in one sitting! Nor are these exhaustive categories that we should try to fit all of our students into. Rather, they can help us put our ideas of what engagement must be aside and recenter those who are right in front of us.

​My coworkers were much more engaged than I had given them credit for, and that has changed the way I view our time together. When we meet people where they are and make room for them to engage, we find that our classroom has room for everyone. We’re all playing the same game, after all!

Integrate student-centered approaches to reduce your workload while maximizing student learning and collaboration.

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit a seasoned math teacher, Ms. M., whose passion for teaching was unmistakable. Her enthusiasm for math came alive as she demonstrated solving multi-step equations, making real-world connections to when these skills might be used. Using colorful markers, she modeled the problem-solving process, guiding her students through each step. Her students eagerly followed along, jotting notes in their notebooks and raising their hands to answer questions like, “What do I do next?”

The energy and structure in Ms. M.'s classroom were inspiring. However, as Ms. M continued to model problem after problem, some questions began to surface in my mind. 

• How many whole-class practice problems are necessary?
• How does Ms. M. gauge whether all her students are truly understanding?
• What about the students who aren’t raising their hands or those seated at the back, often struggling to hear their peers’ responses?

These reflections prompted me to consider the balance between teacher-led instruction and opportunities for student-driven learning.

Whole-class instruction has undeniable benefits. It provides structure, allows teachers to maintain control over the pace of the lesson, and can help manage behaviors. However, relying solely on this approach may unintentionally limit students' growth and a teacher’s ability to assess their understanding.

When students spend most of the class copying notes or watching the teacher work through problems, they’re engaged in passive learning. While this compliance might look like understanding, it’s worth asking: Are they truly grappling with the material?
​
I’ve experienced this tension firsthand. As a teacher, it’s tempting to stick with whole-class instruction because it feels efficient. But over time, I realized that by holding the reins too tightly, I was doing most of the work. My students weren’t building the cognitive muscles needed to tackle challenges independently.

One powerful framework that helped me balance instruction and engagement was the I Do, We Do, You Do model. Initially, I used this approach in reading and writing workshops, but I soon found it effective across all disciplines, including math. This method provides a clear structure:

1. I Do – The teacher models the skill or concept
2. We Do – Students practice together with guidance and support
3. You Do – Students work independently, applying their learning

This approach not only ensures students have time to practice but also allows the teacher to observe, assess, and adjust instruction in real-time.

Now, let’s explore how Ms. M. could integrate this framework into her teaching, building on the context of the visit I previously described: 

• I Do: Ms. M. begins by modeling 2–3 problems using the board or a document camera. She explains her thinking step-by-step, highlighting strategies and common pitfalls.
• We Do: Instead of continuing with more whole-class examples, Ms. M. poses a problem for students to solve in pairs using a Think-Pair-Share activity. As students work, she circulates the room, observing their process and offering feedback. Afterward, she invites a pair to share their solution with the class, either verbally or by modeling it on the board. This collaborative step allows students to learn from each other and reinforces their understanding.
• You Do: Next, students work independently on similar problems. Ms. M. might differentiate tasks by providing "reach" problems for advanced learners or small-group support for those needing extra help. This independent practice not only deepens learning but also gives Ms. M. valuable insight into her students’ progress.
• Closing: To wrap up, Ms. M. brings the class together for a quick review. Students might share their learning aloud or complete an exit ticket, giving Ms. M. additional data to inform her next lesson.

Why advocate for this approach? Research, such as Jo Boaler’s work in Mathematical Mindsets, highlights the importance of mathematical discourse in fostering deeper understanding, reducing math anxiety, and promoting a growth mindset. When students take ownership of their learning through collaboration and problem-solving, they not only engage more deeply but also retain concepts more effectively.

By shifting some of the cognitive load to students, teachers can focus on circulating the room, checking for understanding, and offering targeted support. This dynamic, student-centered approach helps meet learners where they are and ensures that all voices are heard.

For seasoned educators like Ms. M., letting go of traditional methods can feel daunting. But the benefits of integrating strategies like I Do, We Do, You Do are transformative. This framework not only empowers students to take charge of their learning but also lightens the teacher's workload, allowing for more meaningful interactions and assessment.

I encourage all teachers — whether in math or other disciplines — to experiment with this model. By clearly defining what you’ll do as the teacher, what students will do collaboratively, and what they’ll tackle independently, you create a structured yet flexible environment where true learning thrives.

Turn the obstacles created by shifting learning styles into opportunities for adaptation and innovation. 

When it comes to education, every era has its defining tools and methods, each playing a central role. From the iconic chalkboards that once graced classroom walls to the overhead projectors that illuminated our lessons, these tools were fundamental in shaping our educational approaches. However, as technology continues to progress, these traditional tools are gradually being replaced by more advanced alternatives.

As such, education must evolve to keep pace with these changes, and teachers need to adapt to new technologies and teaching methods to effectively meet the needs of their modern learners. In a world defined by 21st century innovation, we can no longer rely on 20th century teaching methods. Yet, embracing change is no easy feat! In a whirlwind of shifts, resistance often arises, especially from educators who’ve experienced firsthand the loss and excitement of these transitions. Many educators find themselves grappling with the need to let go of cherished beliefs and teaching methods rooted in their own experiences and identities. 
​
In my recent conversations with teachers, a common sentiment emerges: the perceived disinterest of students in reading, their struggle with mastering basic skills like multiplication tables, and their apparent lack of engagement in critical thinking. These concerns are undoubtedly valid. However, as educators, we must confront the reality that today's students interact with reading, interests, and motivations in ways vastly different from previous generations. Accepting these changes can be difficult, especially when they seem to highlight deficiencies. But if we examine the changes and evolutions of trusted teaching methods of the past, we can gain insight into how technology continues to shape our ways of living and learning, setting the stage for understanding which teaching methods have become obsolete in today's digital age.

Modern textbooks became a staple starting in the 15th century. These trusty learning companions were used by teachers and students for generations and were praised for their wealth of knowledge evident in their heavy weight. Carrying a textbook was once a symbol of academic dedication, but in today's digital world, textbooks alone do not suffice. They're too basic for modern learners who want interactive, multimedia experiences, and as technology advances and access to information increases, textbooks just can't keep up with the engaging and personalized learning experiences students need. 

In the 16th century, the encyclopedia was introduced. It was once praised as the most powerful source of human knowledge, jammed between two hardbound covers. I remember being fascinated by Encyclopædia Britannica and waiting in line to use the limited supply in our classroom. I would turn the delicate pages to find answers to all sorts of questions. But today, hard copy encyclopedias are obsolete. Students now have access to the vastness of the internet for instant information and real-time updates.

In the 19th century, we experienced the creation of the modern library catalog system, with its neatly indexed cards and Dewey Decimal classifications. It was once the key to the world of knowledge within a library's walls — it guided students through the maze of shelves, leading them to the books and resources they wanted to read. I distinctly recall my visits to the library, armed with my own shiny library card, seeking advice and assistance from the librarian, and paying fees when I missed the return deadline.

​Yet, with the advent of digital databases and online search engines, the catalog system is a symbol of the past, replaced by instant access to a wealth of information at our fingertips. Furthermore, the act of reading itself has undergone a significant transformation. While some still cherish the smell and feel of a physical book, like me, checking out physical books has become a distant memory for many. Many people have embraced the convenience of accessing articles, podcasts, audiobooks, and other digital formats. The act of "reading" has expanded to include a wide array of mediums, reflecting the changing preferences and lifestyles of readers and learners in the digital age.

These transformations reflect the resilience of education in the face of technological advancements, underscoring that with change comes the potential for growth, adaptation, and progress. Librarians have evolved into “digital resource coordinators,” “media specialists,” and “information specialists,” guiding learners through the digital landscape. And traditional book companies have transitioned to online platforms for greater accessibility and customization.

Today, we're facing rapid technological changes, like YouTube, TikTok, and social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. There's also a growing presence of Generative AI, which, like changes in the past, can feel daunting. These advancements are reshaping the learning landscape, with some fearful of the implications for originality and personal privacy, while others view them as an opportunity to revolutionize education by offering personalized learning experiences for every student. 

I've been encouraging teachers to ask: What are the goals I have for my students? Where do these goals originate, and do they align with the demands of the 21st century? These inquiries prompt us to determine when adjustments are necessary, whether it involves letting go of outdated methods, revising our approaches, or affirming current practices.

Recently, I've observed educators designing innovative and relevant projects that deeply engage their students. These projects often culminate in products inspired by social media or TikTok videos, and sometimes incorporate QR codes for added interaction.

For example, in a history class, students were creating short TikTok-inspired videos depicting key historical events or figures, using creative props and costumes to make the content engaging and memorable. These challenges can encourage active learning and collaboration among students, as they work together to brainstorm ideas and produce their videos. 

In a science class, I witnessed students engaging in a "Science Experiment Challenge" where they were tasked with filming themselves, with help from the technology teachers, conducting simple experiments and explaining the scientific principles behind them. This not only reinforces learning but also allows students to showcase their understanding in a fun and interactive way. 

In an art class, a teacher had her students showcase their creative projects by creating a series of Instagram- inspired posts including captions and comments, allowing them to document their artistic process from conception to completion. 

And in an ELA class, a teacher shared how she has been using AI platforms, like Brainly, to provide additional support to her students by offering personalized tutoring sessions, answering questions, and providing explanations on various topics, supplementing traditional classroom instruction. 

These examples demonstrate teachers’ efforts to stay updated on technological changes and connect with students by leveraging their interests. 

Regardless of your sentiments around these shifts and changes, their impact on students cannot be denied. Therefore, it's crucial to shift our focus towards supporting students in developing the skills and competencies necessary for success in the modern world. Rather than viewing students' changing learning styles and interests as obstacles, we must see them as opportunities for growth, adaptation, and innovation.

By meeting students where they are and embracing their unique perspectives, we can foster a learning environment that encourages curiosity, critical thinking, and engagement with the world around them. This approach not only prepares students for the challenges of today, but also equips them with the resilience and adaptability needed to thrive in an ever-changing future.

References

The Journal of American History
Textbooks Today and Tomorrow: A Conversation about History, Pedagogy, and Economics

Encyclopedia Britannica
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Find inspiration for classroom discussions that encourage students to make their voices heard. 

“So, what are your thoughts? Talk with each other.” 
​
I remember asking this question many times, always expecting it to be greeted immediately and enthusiastically by the voices of many students, clamoring to share all at once. 

In some classrooms, that was the case. In most others, a deafening silence would stretch for several minutes. Eventually, I’d ask a new question or encourage them to write down their answers and turn them in so that I could read them. Most students had an abundance of thoughts, I discovered, when they handed in their written responses. 

I desperately wanted to create a culture of discussion in my classroom, one in which students could not stop talking to one another about our texts and topics of study. But, this open-ended question asking them to share their thoughts never seemed to stimulate the kind of discussions that I was searching for.

The question for me became, how can I begin to create a culture of discussion in my classroom? 

Questioning

To explore that larger question, I began with a smaller one: what kind of questions were the most exciting for me to answer as a learner? 

We all may have different answers to that question, and I encourage you to take a few moments to think or to write about what your unique answer might be. 

In my own process of reflection, I discovered that I am enthusiastic to answer questions that are open-ended: those that invite many different perspectives and clearly do not have one “correct” answer. 

I also love questions that get me thinking about something that hasn’t occurred to me before: thought-provoking questions that feel relevant to me in some way, connecting to my interests, my recent thought patterns, or some facet of my identity. 

And, most especially, I love answering questions when I can be assured that someone else around me will answer, too. There is something vulnerable about sharing thoughts and ideas in a classroom space, especially when there is no guarantee that others will do the same. 

Out of my own reflections came clear pathways forward — new things to try. 
​

• What if I asked focused, open-ended questions? 
• What if I asked thought-provoking questions that are relevant to my students’ lives?
• What if I asked questions and invited students to respond using protocols that expected reciprocal responses? What might those protocols be?

Paired discussion

The first protocol that I embraced consistently became the turn and talk. Rather than invite students to share in front of the whole class, I’d invite students to turn and talk to one person next to them, taking turns to share their responses. 

I can appreciate how many teachers mock the turn-and-talk discussion protocol as a favorite of administrators who believe that this discussion technique will solve all educational dilemmas. As teachers, it can be easy to become cynical quickly about those strategies most commonly suggested. 

With that said, the turn-and-talk protocol transformed academic talk in my classroom. By the third or fourth time that I implemented the strategy, I was stunned by all the ideas my students were willing to share with each other that they wouldn’t share with the whole class. 

But, it also made sense once I implemented the protocol, as so many things in retrospect often do. It’s much easier to share with a peer than with one’s teacher. It’s much easier to share with a peer when you know that they will share in return with you. 

Eventually, I knew that I wanted the turn-and-talk to grow into small group discussions. So, how? 

Small group discussion

“Save the Last Word for Me” was introduced to me by a colleague who was devoted to building a culture of discussion in her classroom. 

Her explanation was simple, and I do my best to recreate it here: 

1. Put students into groups of four
2. Each students reads and chooses one quote of significance to them for whatever the reason
3. Each student in the group reads the quote then theorizes aloud about why the quote holds significance
4. The student who initially chose the quote has the “last word” to explain their original thinking about why they chose their quote

I never implemented the protocol to fidelity, but it inspired lots of small group discussions in my classrooms. What if I tried it with images? With documents? With word problems? What if the groups were slightly larger or smaller? 

To me, one beautiful thing about teaching is that every protocol is an invitation to create and to re-create things until they feel like our own. I invite you to do the same — what small group discussion strategies might this one protocol inspire? 

Whole class discussion

I never gave up on my dream of whole class discussions. As many English teachers can appreciate, the Socratic seminar is often celebrated as the pinnacle of literary discussions. 

After many months of paired and small group discussions, I was terrified that our first Socratic seminar of the year would be a return to the silence. 

Students are always full of surprises. 

“But did you look here at what she says on page 23? It makes me think that….”
“I’m not sure I agree, but that’s an interesting point. Have you thought about….” 
“That’s a good point. Maybe we should think about….”

The voices, the laughter, the thoughts swirling around — it was everything that I had hoped for my students in a whole class discussion. 

I described this moment of success with a fellow teacher, expressing my surprise and amazement about how successful our first Socratic seminar was. 

He laughed, “I’m not surprised. Your kids are always talking.” 

An invitation

Creating a culture of discussion was not a linear experience for me as a teacher. I learned from the wisdom of fellow teachers and, no matter what protocols I used, there were days in which silence felt inevitable. But, I did get my students talking. 

If you’re interested in thinking more about how to create a culture of discussion in your own classroom, I invite you to join me online at Keep the Kids Talking, where you can reflect on your own experiences, and also acquire new, implementable discussion strategies.

I hope to see you there. 

Encourage meaningful reading habits as you ask students to engage in a dialogue with their text. 

Over the past few years, I have heard more and more middle and high school teachers agree about how difficult it is to “get kids to read." I have observed myself that few students seem to be reading full length books independently, and by choice. Of course, there are so many reasons for these observations.

Let’s zoom out a bit to think about the state of reading for most of our students: in the past, reading was not only a major form of entertainment, but a crucial source of information. Time for reading was not in competition with an expansive, alluring digital world offering games, web surfing, Tik Tok, Instagram, endless TV and YouTube channels, etc. Even as adults, we know how easily accessible and comforting these modalities are. Technology offers us so many easy, even addictive options.
 
Technology has also made it easier for students to “read” or pretend they have read an assigned text by scanning summaries of chapters, Googling quotations from the text, watching video versions, etc. Information that we may have needed to access by reading a book is now available at the click of a finger or by saying a few words to AI.
We have all been there — we even have a term for this, tl;dr, or too long, didn’t read.
 
Research confirms my own observations that few young people are reading on their own or consider “reading for pleasure." The Pew Research Center asserts that, “few late teenagers are reading many books” and a recent summary of studies cited by Common Sense Media indicates that American teenagers are less likely to read ‘for fun’ at seventeen than at thirteen.”
 
The pandemic also seems to have derailed some students’ academic reading habits, which have proven to be like muscles that need to be exercised more regularly than we previously knew.
 
All of this means that if we want our students to read, to become strong, confident readers, and maybe even enjoy reading, it is crucial for educators to make reading meaningful and relevant for our students, and not simply “cheat proof."

Encouraging students to read

​Offering students choices of relevant books to read and discuss together in book groups or pairs is a fantastic way to encourage them to engage in reading. However, most educators agree that reading a book together — as a shared “anchor text” for the whole class — can also be important and lead to powerful discussions and collective learning.

Mike Epperson — a teacher with whom I work closely in the South Bronx — took the opportunity to bring a shared anchor text to his 10th grade classroom, introducing his students to Elie Wiesel’s Night. 

While Night is a riveting, significant story and a relevant choice for 10th graders, who are concurrently learning about World War II and the Holocaust in history class, that doesn’t guarantee that students will engage in the reading. Mike was concerned about ensuring that his students were both engaged deeply and personally in the important subject matter and took it seriously. He decided early on that he wanted students to read the entire book.

Mike strategically layered his teaching unit with Night at its core, along with supports and entry points to encourage high engagement, including: background building about the Holocaust, Anti-Semitism, and Judaism, and a careful sequence of lessons that focused on a key topic in a section of the book.  
 
Additionally, to encourage reluctant or less confident readers to read daily and remain engaged in reading the whole book, Mike emphasized and taught annotation. Since the school had copies of the book left over from ordering during the pandemic, Mike was able to give each student their own book to write in and keep.

These two simple pieces — students having a book of their own and an opportunity to talk back to the text through annotation — created an environment ripe for close reading and high engagement.

Encouraging students to annotate

Getting students to annotate in their actual books wasn’t as simple as Mike had expected — he recalls that “when we first started annotating, some students expressed resistance because they didn’t want to make the nice-looking book look ugly. One student compared it to writing on a beautiful painting with crayon.”

However, as time went on, students were “able to find a way to annotate that helped them preserve the beauty of the original text. I believe that as students took on a self-appointed role as the book’s preservationists, they ended up developing a deeper respect for the content of the book as well.”

As the students connected more personally with the book and the character of Elie, Mike began to see that the act of authentic annotation was offering students an unanticipated opportunity for creative expression. He shared that “a lot of students like drawing, and there’s a similar appeal in annotation. While annotating is not drawing, a fully annotated page is visually pleasing. Some students’ annotations are neat, symmetrical, and visually appealing in a way that suggests that students take pride in how their annotations look. I think this fosters a sense of pride in the content of their annotations, too.”

Mike’s observations of his students’ annotations confirm the belief that writing as you read makes your thinking visible, and can create an engaging conversation as we talk back to the text. He puts it simply: “Annotation gives the students a more active role in reading. They get to have a voice, even if no one else will see their annotations.”

The students are no longer alone with a book. They are in dialogue. 

Suggestions for successful annotation

When I visit Mike’s classroom, students eagerly show me their annotations and explain the significance of both specific lines on a page and their connections to larger themes. A number of students also tell me how much annotation is helping them “remember’ and “understand” past parts of the story. They are clearly proud of their text marking and meaning-making. Based on my observations of Mike’s classes, I’d like to offer some simple tips for making annotation a successful approach with your own students:

Hopefully, you will feel inspired to introduce or continue using annotation in your classroom! As you encourage students to read with their pen and engage in a dialogue with a text, feel free to adjust any of the strategies above to match the readers and annotators in your classroom. 
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Four ways to cultivate student connections through stories, personalities, and interests.

It’s the first few weeks of school. New students are entering our school’s hallways and sitting in our classrooms. Fresh paper, pencils, and (hopefully) charged computers are perched on desks. Awkward glances and shuffling feet and uncertain pauses fill the air. As teachers, we are faced with this challenge: how do we begin to build a learning community in our classroom, one that invites trusting dialogue and encourages intellectual curiosity? 

I often received one, seemingly simple answer: “find a good icebreaker.” 

An icebreaker is an activity or engagement task designed to get people talking and learning about one another — in other words, a task to “break the ice” of social awkwardness. A fellow teacher in my school swore by “Would You Rather?” as the icebreaker that had withstood the test of time, asking students to answer a series of extreme either-or questions like, “Would you rather fight a bear or a shark, and why?”

I don’t think there’s one best icebreaker for all students or for all teachers. It’s difficult to know definitively what will resonate with your particular students. With that said, I knew that it was possible to find an icebreaker that invited students to get to know each other in a meaningful, personal way.

Below you’ll find four activities that will help you “break the ice” with your new students and begin creating genuine connections within your classroom community. 

The Neighborhood Map
Discovering & Writing About a Memory

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This first activity, invites students to make a memory map of their childhood bedroom, apartment, house, or neighborhood. Then, it asks students to look for stories they can share, inspired by places marked on their map. 

​The memory map was developed by Stephen Dunning in the early 1970s and later articulated in his book Getting the Knack (1992). His workshops led to other educators across the country creating various versions of this practice, including by members of the South Coast California Writing Project.

Ask students to draw a birds-eye view map, then “walk” a partner or small group through descriptions of the places on their maps. After doing so, students number and label these “story places” on their maps and choose one story to write about further.

Students are invited to share their written story in a partnership or in a small group. For younger students, I encourage using some sentence starters to scaffold the sharing process, such as “This place stays in my mind because…” or “The important thing about this story is…” 

A possible set of directions are included here and here, but I encourage you to develop directions that will work best for you and for your students. For those who may not feel comfortable drawing their own memory map, perhaps imaginative or fictional map drawing could accomplish a similar goal of learning about your students.

If writing is a central component of your classroom, consider transforming this activity into a writing benchmark for your students at the beginning of the year to gain insight into their writing abilities. This activity can work in an elementary, middle, high school, college, or even adult-education setting, and is especially inclusive for English language learning students, given the opportunity to tell stories through drawn visuals. 

The Cultural Tree
Getting to Know Yourself and Your Students
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In this activity, students are asked to create a “cultural tree” that represents their culture. Originally envisioned as part of Zaretta Hammond’s work in Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain, the drawing of cultural trees asks students to identify three levels of their culture: surface level — aspects of culture you can see like food and dress, shallow culture — aspects less explicit, like concepts of eye contact and personal space, and deep culture — unconscious beliefs and norms like concepts of fairness and spirituality. 

My colleague at CPET, Lauren Midgette, has used Hammond’s work to write and to reflect on the possibilities it has for getting to know students, but also ourselves, better in the classroom this school year. Midgette makes the point that the drawing of cultural trees — and the discussions inspired by them — provides a healthy soil to help our students grow. Each level of culture — surface, shallow, and deep — is visualized on the tree as leaves, trunk, and roots, respectively. 

For younger students, I don’t think the framing of the tree as “cultural” is necessary for the activity to be an effective tool for discussion. Students could certainly label a tree with aspects of who they are that are surface (easily seen by others), shallow (not as easily seen), or deep (entirely unseen). 

Telling a Story Through An Object

This third activity requires slightly more teacher preparation than the first two, but is one that I have found particularly effective with students of all ages. I created the directions to facilitate this activity — linked here, but the premise was inspired by fellow educators: objects, even the most simple ones, are imbued with our stories.

First, find an ordinary cardboard box. Label it “mystery box.” Next, fix it with a bunch of objects — they can be commonplace things like birthday candles, hair ties, or chewing gum — or more particular objects, like sports paraphernalia or local fruits and vegetables. Lastly, close it and place it in a very visible place in the classroom and say nothing about it to your students until you begin class. 

Explain to students that inside the box are a bunch of objects that you will pull out one at a time. As soon as students see an object that reminds them of a story, memory, or experience, encourage them to start writing that story. 

The final thing that I pull out of the box is a slip of paper that says, “the object that you were hoping I was going to pull out.” It’s a catch-all invitation for students to write about an object close to their heart that you may not have been able to acquire. 

Invite students to share their stories with one another after they have written them. 

In my facilitation of this activity, I found that students often worried that their story wouldn’t be “good” or “significant” enough. I explicitly invite ordinary stories from students, which have never been “ordinary,” but rather extraordinary insights into the students and their backgrounds and interests. 

As the year progresses, I invite you to experiment with this activity in the reverse: invite students to bring in their own meaningful objects that have a personal story attached to them to add to a classroom box. They can share their objects and stories before placing them into the box.

Beginning With A Two Sentence Story

​The fourth icebreaker requires no teacher preparation and the prompt for students is incredibly simple: write the beginning of a two-sentence story from your day today. This activity, as well as these questions, were introduced to me by Professor Ruth Vinz at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Invite students to write in the present tense as a means to place themselves back in the moment they are writing about. Remind students that the purpose is not to assess their writing skills, nor to write the most significant story possible. The story starter can be simple, so long as it is about some event from their day. 

This icebreaker would work especially well for an afternoon class. Alternatively, the prompt could be modified to read, “write the beginning of a two-sentence story from your day yesterday. Even though the story happened yesterday, please write in the present tense, as though you are living the story at this very moment.”

After writing their two sentences, invite all students to read them aloud in no particular order and without any further explanation. Next, invite students to consider how their stories might be threaded or connected together.

Consider these facilitation questions: 

• What do you notice or wonder about these stories?
• Whose story remains with you at this moment?
• What are some ways these stories are connected? 
• What can we learn from our class through these stories if we think of them all together? 
• What did we not include in our stories?

Dive a Little Deeper Under the Ice

Icebreakers can be wonderful ways to start connecting with new students — they alleviate nerves and provide an entry point for relationship building. 

This year, I invite you to not only “break the ice,” but also to dive a little deeper under the surface, creating ways for students to connect in genuine ways through their stories, personalities, and interests. 

Please modify these activities — they are intended to be transformed for you and your classroom. And the best part? These activities can be used at any point in time to learn something new about your students.
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Engage students in rich mathematical tasks that honor the process more than the solution. 

​I was recently sitting with a high school algebra teacher — who was preparing a lesson about translating sequences into functions or equations — and trying to encourage him to use this archive of visual patterns with his students. We discussed matching different groups of students to different images and asking them to try writing an equation for the pattern. As the teacher started practicing on his own, writing equations for some of the patterns that were offered, this picture came up, and we both began to struggle. 

​Neither of us could figure it out.

Other teachers started coming by to join:

“There has to be an exponent in there somewhere...”
“But just an exponent wouldn’t make sense…”
“Are we multiplying the exponent? Or maybe multiplying and adding?”

This had started with only one teacher, but soon there were five teachers huddled around this image, trying to find a solution. One teacher got out a marker and began writing possibilities on the board. Another started running through calculations in their head, shouting out theories. Finally, one teacher said, “Oh, it’s a quadratic!” 

The algebra teacher who had started with me stated, “see I can’t do this with my students, we couldn’t even figure it out”. But I had the complete opposite reaction. I was surprised at how many had engaged in our puzzle. We were all trying out different methods, debating and discussing throughout our process.

​This is what a math classroom should look like every day. 

Making room for authentic engagement

As math teachers, it can feel scary to introduce a problem to students that doesn’t have a clear and simple solution. But how else is authentic math engagement supposed to happen in the classroom? In our example, even if we had never arrived at a solution, all the math thinking and practice we did to try and get there would have been worth the struggle. Even if a student never achieved a correct equation or solution, they still would have stretched their thinking and understanding of patterns and functions just by trying to work through the task.

The inspiration for this task came from Jo Boaler’s work on Mathematical Mindsets. In her book, she reminds us how beautiful and rich mathematical thinking can be, and offers advice on how to bring that into your classroom. This task we were testing out among teachers includes many of the suggestions she offers for making rich mathematical tasks. Boaler describes these tasks as having multiple entry points, visual components, and options for inquiry and debate. 

As you incorporate these elements into the math tasks in your classroom, consider the following questions as you shift into a richer mathematical lens:

• Is there only one way to approach this task? Can I change this task to have multiple solutions or multiple processes for finding the solution? 
• Is there a visual component in this assignment? Can I add a visual representation or graph to help students work through the task? 
• Is there room for debate and discussion in this assignment? Could I add a place where students have to defend their mathematical thinking to a critic? 
• Do I show students how to solve the problem before presenting it? Can I rearrange my lesson to allow students to play with a problem before offering them processes and solutions? 

Our original task starts with a visual component and includes multiple methods of entry. Students have the opportunity to make sense of the visual in any way they see fit — maybe they prefer to focus on the numbers, or maybe they want to look at the way the shape of the image is changing. There are no clear steps to follow to solve this puzzle; students have to play and engage in multiple ways before they can predict patterns and solutions. 

Another great aspect of this task is that students of all math levels can participate and still walk away learning something from the experience. Maybe some students will leave noticing there is not a constant amount of change between the pictures. Maybe some students will consider the way addition and multiplication look different in patterns. Maybe some students will write a quadratic equation and then be able to predict future images. The possibilities are endless. 

When we provide math problems that have very clear and explicit steps, we may lead students to the correct answer, but we also limit the creativity they can experience. We teach students that there is a right and wrong way to do math. We contribute to the negative feelings and attitudes many students already have about math. And lastly, we take away the fun. 

Making room for rich mathematical tasks that have multiple entry points, opportunities for debate, and visual components can help make every student feel like they can one day be a real mathematician. It can help students of all levels rediscover the fun in math.

Encourage students to expand their repertoire of ways to read and respond to literature.

​As someone who loves to read and write, one of my favorite things to do is annotate texts — whether it be a few scrawled words in the margins of my most beloved hardcover books or endless questions written on sticky notes falling out of flailing paperbacks, my annotations capture the spirit of my hyper-personal engagement with a text.

When I became an English teacher, I knew that I wanted my students to learn how to annotate, in part because I wanted them to capture their noticings and wonderings as they engaged in their own distinctive reading process. In “Literature as Exploration” (1995), Louise Rosenblatt wrote that every person has a unique, transactional experience when they read a text, in which they “live through” something special. I think of annotations like mementos of this special reading experience because they capture a moment in time in the transactional experience that would otherwise be lost. 

Every time we read a text, even if it’s one that we’ve read hundreds of times before, we encounter a new transactional experience. As we annotate and re-annotate texts, we leave behind a trail of our reading experiences: our questions, thoughts, and wonderings. I desperately wanted my students to develop that experiential, transactional trail of their reading processes. 

The Traveling Text

Imagine my surprise when I discovered, as a new teacher, that my students often responded to my call for annotations with, “I don’t know how to annotate!” or “Can you tell me what to annotate for?” or, worst of all, “I hate annotating. It’s a waste of time.” I can recall my naive shock when I heard my students respond in this way. In a desperate attempt to show my students the value of annotating, I began tirelessly modeling annotation strategies and my own methods of annotation, but doing so yielded little success. 

With time, I developed an incredibly simple strategy for teaching my students to annotate. Essentially, I stopped teaching my students to annotate through direct instruction and, instead, encouraged them to teach one another. This instructional strategy was, in my teaching, a solution to the problem of students feeling like they “don’t know” how to annotate or that annotating has “no purpose.” I call this strategy The Traveling Text (download here).

The Traveling Text is simple, requires minimal teacher preparation, empowers students, builds community, and teaches annotation skills. And implementing this strategy with your students only takes four steps.

​The impact of The Traveling Text

In my teaching experience, here are some of the impacts of this strategy on my students and our classroom community: 

• Promoting belonging: when students are invited to respond to one another’s annotations, it promotes in them a new sense of themselves as intellectual members of an academic community. For students who are more introverted in verbal class discussions, this strategy can allow them to engage in a written dialogue with other students.
• Building students’ repertoire of responding to literature: as they read and respond to one another’s annotations, students’ repertoire of reading strategies expands. Perhaps this is because when we are given a window to see into others’ transactional reading experiences, they expand our own methods of responding to literature.
• Shifting the audience of annotations from teacher to fellow student: students no longer write annotations focused solely on identifying the literary elements that they think their English teacher wants them to find, like symbolism, for instance. Instead, their annotations become more honest, insightful, humorous, and personal, likely because students know that their peers will be reading them, not their teacher. 

Teaching students to read for meaning (and for pleasure) is a daunting task. Often, our students come to us already feeling like they don’t know how to read and annotate literary texts in the “correct” way, one that highlights what a teacher or evaluator might be looking for. 

The Traveling Text creates possibilities for students to expand their own repertoire of ways to closely read and respond to literature. But, even more importantly, the strategy encourages students to experience a sense of intellectual community and belonging with their classmates as they share with one another written artifacts of their own transactional reading experiences.
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Build a classroom culture that encourages active listening and a willingness to consider others' perspectives. 

​When I was a middle school English Language Arts teacher, I often asked my students to engage in debates inspired by our readings. For example, I once asked my students to read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” — a short story in which a group of villagers participate in a long-standing tradition of stoning to death the “winner” of a mandatory lottery — and to debate whether or not the villagers could be considered “murderers.” 

The prompt for students to “debate” with one another had its benefits: my students often became passionate to defend their beliefs and their analyses of the text, and students read the text closely to identify evidence and to justify their thinking out loud. However, notable shortcomings also arose when students engaged in the task of debate: they often became combative and indignant when others did not agree with them, and they seemed resistant to change their initial side of the argument. 

At any age, it can be challenging for students to admit that they have changed their minds, especially in front of their peers. Even moreso, it can be challenging for students to actively listen and to respond to others’ points of view and analyses. It requires the ability to welcome or to accept a new idea or perspective. An excellent way to foster this kind of openness in the classroom — this culture of intellectual and social empathy — is to ask students to participate in what Peter Elbow called “The Believing Game.” 

Balancing believing & doubting

The task of debate often asks students to participate in what Elbow called “The Doubting Game.” The doubting game requires students to be skeptical and as analytic as possible. It encourages students to try hard to doubt ideas, to discover contradictions or weaknesses, and to scrutinize and test others’ logical reasoning. This kind of critical thinking can be incredibly valuable, but it can also foster a classroom culture that only celebrates doubting, whether that be doubting ideas presented in a text or ideas presented by others in the classroom space. 

Contrastingly, “The Believing Game” asks students to try to be as welcoming or accepting as possible to every idea they encounter: not only to listen to different views, but also to hold back from arguing with those different views. Further, the believing game asks students to restate others’ beliefs or arguments without bias and to participate in the act of actually trying to believe them. Elbow points out that “often we cannot see what’s good in someone else’s idea (or in our own!) till we work at believing it…when an idea goes against current assumptions and beliefs — or if it seems alien, dangerous, or poorly formulated — we often cannot see any merit in it.”. 

Including the believing game in your classroom does not need to coincide with the removal of the doubting game. The act of doubting — of critically thinking to develop thoughtful skepticism — is an undoubtedly important skill for students to develop in order to discern truth. But, a sole focus on doubting, as I shared from my own teaching experience, can lead to a classroom culture in which students are always inclined to doubt. This inclination can lead to rigid thinking, and an unwillingness to listen, respond, and grow. At its worst, this inclination can lead to a classroom culture in which students become hostile towards other students’ beliefs or ideas that seem oppositional to their own. 

The benefits of believing

Peter Elbow, the creator of the believing and doubting games, is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has written extensively about the benefits of methodological believing for students and teachers. He identified three main benefits for the believing game in classrooms: 

1. The believing game helps us to find flaws in our own thinking. The flaws in our own thinking usually come from assumptions — our ways of thinking that we accept without noticing — that are part of the very structure of our thinking. The believing game helps us to find the “invisible flaws” in what we can’t see in our own thinking. By engaging in different points of view that carry different assumptions, our new vantage points help us to notice the assumptions that our own customary point of view keeps hidden. 
2. The believing game helps us to choose among competing positions. Decisions or acts of judgment always depend on how much weight we give to various arguments. The doubting game can help us to find flaws in arguments, but it can’t make decisions for us. There are arguments for and against national testing and grading for instance. It is possible to find flaws in some of those arguments, but logic cannot show that intervention or national testing or grading are right or wrong. To decide whether to invade or test or grade — these are decisions that involve acts of judgment.
   
3. The believing game helps us to achieve goals that the doubting game neglects. Undoubtedly, the doubting game helps students to develop an important dimension of intelligence, logic, and rationality. But the monopoly of the doubting game in our classrooms can lead to students detaching themselves from new ideas. This can lead to adversarial discussions in which students try to point out the flaws in others’ points of view. This inclination to find fault can lead to a classroom culture of animosity and rigidity. 

Engage students in the game of believing

The opportunities for students to participate in the game of believing are endless. I offer here a few suggestions for simple ways to engage students in the game of the believing.

• In a debate scenario, ask students to “change sides” from their initial argument. Returning to my example of an ELA classroom debate about “The Lottery,” I would first ask students to decide whether or not the villagers are “murderers.” After students express their initial beliefs, I would tell students to argue the opposite. So, if a student was vehement that the villagers were murderers, they would have to first defend that the villagers were not murderers. Ultimately, I would give students the opportunity to be skeptical and to doubt, but only after they had the opportunity to believe and to occupy a different point of view. 
• In a discussion scenario, ask students to respond with a compliment or an affirmation of another person’s thinking. Like Elbow discusses, students (and academics) tend to seek out and comment first on the flaws of another person’s thinking. While there is certainly a place for logical criticism in the classroom, there is also a place for believing and recognizing strong logic. Ask students to respond with sentence stems that ask them to engage in believing: I appreciate how you highlighted that piece of evidence because… or I agree with what you said about…
• In a direction-giving scenario, verbally encourage your students to change their minds. Even in student-centered classrooms, the opinions and beliefs of teachers play a role. Teachers’ attitudes contribute to a classroom’s culture. As teachers, we can advocate for the benefits of believing alongside the benefits of doubting. We can model the ability to change our minds and to enter into another person’s perspective with a willingness to grow. We can foster empathy in our classrooms and beyond. 

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How to implement discussion opportunities that help students solidify their learning and connect with peers. 

We’ve all had moments where getting students to talk has not been a problem, but when it comes to academic conversations in the classroom, it can be hard to keep the conversation going. Students might be unsure of where to go next, how to change the topic, or even questioning what discussion is good for. Educators might be asking themselves the same questions! What are the advantages of discussion in the classroom, and how can we encourage students to facilitate their own meaningful conversations?

Why discussion? 

​First, let’s talk about the importance of discussion. In their book, Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk That Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings, Zwiers and Crawford note that conversations foster all three language learning processes: listening, talking, and negotiating meaning. Not only can these skills be found in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), but they are also skills we use every day in our own conversations, whether they are academic in nature or more casual. Conversation opportunities give students an authentic space to practice new vocabulary, solidify content learning, strengthen argumentation skills, and connect with their peers.

Discussions also need to be connected to some rigorous questions. What makes a rigorous question? Check out the work of my colleagues Jacqui Stolzer and Dr. Laura Rigolosi to explore how one high school is constructing their own definition of rigor, in service of developing high expectations and meaningful work for their students. 

What can I do to encourage discussion?

As educators, we can purposefully build these conversation opportunities into our lessons, and even beyond that, we can highlight and model talk moves for our students. Parsing out ways to make a conversation meaningful and creating a guide for students can be a powerful way to ensure they are not only learning content through discussions, but becoming effective communicators as well.

Where do I start? 

​Below is an example of how you can start to plan, practice, and implement more student-led discussions in your classroom.

1. Write down the skills you want your students to master. It can be overwhelming to look at the CCSS first, so I encourage you to start by identifying desired skills, and then pair those with standards (if your school requires). For example, if I want my students to be able to build on previous contributions rather than throw out separate ideas just to have their voice heard, I could easily align this with the first Speaking and Listening Standard, which indicates that students will “Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9-10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.”
2. Make strategies visible for your students. Think about conversations that you’ve had and how you demonstrated this skill. For example, how do you demonstrate that your point connects with something said previously? Maybe you say the person’s name and summarize what they said before moving forward. Maybe you pose a question connected to a previous belief. Write these ways down. Model them in the classroom, and call attention to how you specifically use these practices to build the conversation.
3. Provide students with sentence starters. Ready for a discussion? Offer students some assistance to help them apply the discussion skill you've been working on. In our example, these sentence starters might say, “[Name student], I really liked what you said about _________. I want to add on by saying __________.” If you want them to question other ideas, you might give them this sentence starter: “[Name student], I am curious about what you said. I was wondering how it might be different if ______________.” As students get more and more familiar with the skill, they will be able to leave these formulaic sentence starters behind and create their own ways to connect in discussion.

After you’ve had time to practice a few different discussion skills, put them together. Consider pairing students with roles; is someone practicing the role of “Devil’s Advocate”? How about moving the conversation forward when there seems to be a lull? The more students practice these roles, the more natural they will become.

Don’t have the time? Teaching is more than a full-time job, so if this seems like something you really want to try but you just don’t have the time to go through all the skills yourself, check out the work done by Uncommon Schools in their Habits of Academic Discussion Guide. You can also check out Keep the Kids Talking, which offers self-paced opportunities to examine questioning & discussion practices and receive feedback from our coaching team. 

Happy discussing!

​Exploring the connection between instructional autonomy and student engagement. 

Excerpted from Centering Students for Literacy Engagement: Voice, Choice & Identity, A Review of Literature for Behind the Book, conducted by the Center for Professional Education of Teachers at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Teachers who engage in the design of their own instructional goals understand the direct link between engagement, literacy, and content knowledge. They understand that when students are engaged, there is no limit to their learning, which is why it is such a powerful motivator. Teachers are also keenly aware that how they create visible and invisible space for learning to take place has an impact on student engagement. Everything from how a classroom space is organized, decorated, and maintained has an impact on how well students can physically interact in the space. Relationship building is also critical in the classroom, and the research indicates that fostering non-evaluative literacy experiences creates opportunities for students and teachers to more deeply engage in reading and writing. 

Essential factors in engagement

​​In a research review on literacy engagement, produced by The Center for Professional Education of Teachers (CPET) in collaboration with Behind the Book, we analyzed previously published reviews of literature and research studies on literacy engagement. Throughout the literature, student voice, agency, and confidence emerged as essential factors that lead to increased literacy engagement over time. While many attributes contributed to increasing student voice, choice, and agency, six high leverage areas surfaced: student voice, student agency, student confidence, teacher autonomy, learning environment, and relationship-building. Refer to our companion article to read about Student Voice, Choice & Identity.

How do you incorporate these in your practice? 
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What support might you need to deepen your understanding and implementation of these attributes?

Teacher autonomy

Decision-making ideally involves all stakeholders in a school community. The unique role of teachers positions them as professionals in their content areas and the consummate experts of their own classrooms. There is a strong connection between student engagement and how a teacher perceives themselves as authors of their classroom spaces — especially when it comes to teacher autonomy. The concept of professional independence and decision-making is central to motivating teachers to think critically about what, why, and how they’re engaging with their students, which increases their sense of personal and professional responsibility. 

Teachers navigate their choices within the systems and structures of their districts, school, and department. Educational policies affect the everyday experience of teachers and can construct barriers to teachers exercising autonomy in their classrooms. The shift away from autonomy and professional freedom in K-12 schools has had a dramatic impact on teacher engagement, creativity, and organic professional evolution. Policies that acknowledge teachers as experts will implement systems and structures designed to increase decision-making opportunities on every level, from classroom to school to district. Teachers immersed in the design of their own instructional goals understand the direct link between engagement, literacy, and content knowledge. They understand that when students are engaged, there is no limit to their learning, which is powerful for both teacher and student.

When a person has a high level of efficacy in their work, they believe that their time and effort will result in a desired extrinsic or intrinsic reward. For educators, autonomy and efficacy go hand in hand. Teachers are most effective when they have autonomy (decision-making power and the professional responsibilities that come with that power) and efficacy (the belief that their time and effort will generate their desired reward). The effort and self-determination of teachers contributes to their own sense of autonomy and to their students’ success. 

Teacher autonomy is not something that can be developed overnight, especially in communities where there has been tight control on curriculum, instruction, or teacher style. Schools or districts looking to increase teacher autonomy may want to make an investment in professional development for teacher leaders. Starting small and then building with a team is a great entry point to increasing autonomy for some, and creating a sustainable process for others to develop more autonomy. It is important to remember that teacher autonomy does not mean everyone does anything they want at any time, but rather that teachers are able to exercise professional freedoms for instructional and curricular choices focused on the responsibility of meeting students’ needs. This process can be developed and replicated. Schools interested in developing teacher autonomy can first focus on Department or Content area or grade level teams and develop a structure for meeting together, facilitation, and shared research. As teachers learn more about their field, they are better equipped to make decisions grounded in research. 

Instructional autonomy leads to the creation of a dynamic learning space, an increased growth mindset and a mindset towards social justice.

Learning environment

If we think of the word environment, as in habitat or place, the learning environment becomes the space where learning takes place. Curating a positive learning environment requires educators to consider how students learn best, under what conditions their learning can be maximized, and what disrupts the learning environment. Once these questions are answered, educators must use their available resources to design the physical or virtual space to create that environment. 

It’s important for teachers to think critically about creating a space for each student that provides access to resources, manipulatives, and intellectually stimulating tasks. This is commonplace in most elementary school classrooms which utilize their classroom spaces for strategic academic interactions — like the reading rug, the classroom library, and the conferencing table for students to work with their teachers individually or in small groups. All teachers create and cultivate learning spaces in how they interact with their students, how they utilize the space they have, and how they invent ways for students to interact with texts together. 

Rituals and routines play an important role in creating a learning environment that increases student literacy engagement. With a specific eye towards supporting English Language Learners, we can think beyond the physical resources found within a classroom space and focus on having a mindful routine, creating dynamic personal relationships between stakeholders, and developing instructional materials that are culturally and cognitively responsive to students. Additionally, when surrounded by physical texts and images of texts in the classroom spaces, students are more likely to engage in reading on their own. 

Implementing discussion is an integral part of the reading and writing process. When students discuss what they’ve read with their peers, it enhances their understanding, and their interest in the text. When students spend time and effort in retelling what they’ve read, creating a response to their reading, or synthesizing the text in new ways, their energy and effort has a direct correlation to their engagement in the reading itself.

School and district leaders can support teachers to think deeply about their learning environment by being explicit about the resources available to teachers, as well as clarifying a theory of action that articulates how students learn best and translating that theory into an action plan for the learning environment.

Beginning with the theory of action, schools that take the time to develop a shared understanding and a shared approach to learning also reap the benefits of a faculty and staff who are aligned in their mindset and approach and as a result create culture and environment quickly. After articulating the theory of action, schools need to develop an implementation plan, and an accountability plan. How will they see their values come alive in the daily interactions across the school? How will they hold teachers and other school staff members accountable to their ability to translate vision into action?  

Resources may vary, but the constant in any educational setting are teachers and students, together.

Relationship building

Relationships support building bridges between challenging content and critical skills. The relationship provides an avenue for teachers and students to bridge differences and bond through shared experiences. These bonds become a highway for academic support and interventions.

Teachers with a high level of professional freedom typically have the confidence and the creativity to create a positive and engaging learning environment, which will in turn create personal and social spaces for students to find themselves as readers. Those personal and social spaces are nurtured through student-to-student and student-to-teacher relationships. Sharing reading ideas is especially motivating for students. Whether there are formal or informal conversations, teachers and students who read and discuss shared texts create shared experiences and shared memories. These experiences create strong bonds between teachers and students and inform their identities as readers and writers. 

When teachers and school leaders want to increase engagement through relationship building, focusing on social-emotional learning can be a great entry point. Creating spaces for students and teachers to identify their feelings within a given assignment can avoid misunderstandings that develop hurt feelings and divide teachers and students, impacting culture negatively. 

For decades, teachers have found that stories are ways to connect students to themselves, to each other, and to their larger community. Reading and writing are both connected to an audience which makes the act of either an experience in connection. Supporting students academically must include supporting students relationally. When students are able to connect with themselves and their classmates; when they connect with their teachers and count them as caring adults in their lives, they have essential support to then connect with texts that will become the driving force of their learning.

The real and deep need for strong relationships is a key component to student engagement in reading and writing.

Download the white paper: Centering Students for Literacy Engagement: Voice, Choice & Identity, A Review of Literature for Behind the Book, conducted by the Center for Professional Education of Teachers at Teachers College, Columbia University. 


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A look at high-leverage areas for student engagement in reading and writing.

Excerpted from Centering Students for Literacy Engagement: Voice, Choice & Identity, A Review of Literature for Behind the Book, conducted by the Center for Professional Education of Teachers at Teachers College, Columbia University.

When it comes to compliance vs. engagement, we can generally agree that compliance is about conforming, yielding, adhering to cultural norms, and cooperating or obeying. Compliance is focused on a mindset of teachers (or adults) having power over students, rather than empowering them. Whether we’ve recognized it or not, many schools are dominated by compliance-oriented structures which often mimic the behaviors of engagement. When schools structure how students enter, exit, move throughout the building, where they sit, how they sit, when they can go to the bathroom or eat food, the learning environment is dominated by a power-over culture which has an impact on authentic student engagement. 

Engagement, on the other hand, is more difficult to define. Research on engagement and theories of engagement date back over 50 years and come primarily from perspectives in the fields of psychology and sociology. Each field has contributed theoretical frameworks designed to articulate what engagement is, how it works, how engagement breaks down, and how to generate it. 

We may understand the theories behind engagement, but can we articulate what engagement looks like for students in school, with respect to literacy through reading and writing specifically? A focus on literacy engagement is critical because without a personal and intrinsic motivation to read or write, school becomes a space that stifles student growth and prioritizes compliance over engagement. When students can develop a personal, authentic engagement in reading (taking in information and ideas) and writing (expressing information and ideas), students can develop sustainably positive experiences in school that develop their self-efficacy and self-confidence.

Essential factors in engagement

​In a research review on literacy engagement, produced by The Center for Professional Education of Teachers (CPET) in collaboration with Behind the Book, we analyzed previously published reviews of literature and research studies on literacy engagement. Throughout the literature, student voice, agency, and confidence emerged as essential factors that lead to increased literacy engagement over time. While many attributes contributed to increasing student voice, choice, and agency, six high leverage areas surfaced: student voice, student agency, student confidence, teacher autonomy, learning environment, and relationship-building. Refer to our companion article: Centering Students for Literacy Engagement: Teacher as Interdependent Curator & Bridge-Builder to read more about teacher autonomy, learning environment, and relationship building.

How do you incorporate these in your practice? 
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What support might you need to deepen your understanding and implementation of these attributes?

Student voice

Student voice can be cultivated through classroom culture, through reading, and through writing. Classroom culture accumulates the small, large, formal, and informal ways that students interact with one another and their teachers. Here, when their voice is either heard or silenced, it has an impact on how the student engages in classroom activities and tasks. 

Educators find ways to elicit student voice intentionally by creating windows and mirrors. Windows are opportunities for students to see themselves in the literature they’re reading. When teachers design prompts that help students make connections, find commonalities, or empathize with characters or situations they’re reading, they create a metaphorical window for students to see how they connect with a text. Alternatively, teachers can also prompt students with entry points to reading and writing that act as mirrors for students to see their thoughts and feelings emerge on the page as they write or draw. Mirrors reflect our identity, and mirroring tasks and texts give students an opportunity to see themselves as valid, legitimate, and important enough to write about. 

Through publication projects, drawing, drama, and the wide variety of activities teachers can plan, centering student voice is a key factor in reading and writing engagement. For example, when educators place students in the driver’s seat of the drafting, revising, editing, and publishing process, student publication projects support students to both find their voices and to broadcast them. 

Teachers can invite all student voices by creating classroom spaces with a mix of culturally responsive teaching characteristics such as communicating high expectations for all students, expressing positive perspectives on parents and families, practicing student-centered instruction, and reshaping curriculum to meet all student learning needs.

What makes some students more readily able to access and raise their voices is influenced by how the teacher designs a classroom space where students feel free to use their voices.

Student agency

Cultivating in-school literacy experiences that highlight student voice, agency, and influence is in sharp contrast to the drill and kill test prep approach that many teachers feel is necessary to get students to pass the test at the end of the school year. But this is precisely where students need to have their identity, voice, and influence emphasized. 

Student engagement increases when educators deliberately create a culture that does the following: expects students will give feedback to their teachers about their experiences in class; expects students will share what they want to learn; and expects students will share how they want to learn. The student engagement from this culture occurs when teachers respond to those suggestions by making visible changes to instruction. Specific practices include students performing their writing, conducting research with adult allies, and having forums where student voices, ideas, and lived experiences are prioritized. 

Authentic or real-world reading and writing tasks increase student engagement. When the audience for writing widens to include people in addition to one teacher, such as letter writing to local politicians, posting poems on classroom walls and stories in school hallways or publishing a class book in which each student authors a piece and reads it aloud during a celebration and book signing ceremony, students experience an increased sense of agency and engagement in the writing process. Student authors connect their writing to a larger purpose, and writing for an authentic audience allows students to gain skills and perspectives that will serve them beyond the classroom.

Dynamic and long-lasting engagement comes from the combination of student agency (how do students use their voice to influence their education?), community (how do the people surrounding students influence their perception of school?), and the organizing structures of school (how does student voice influence the structure and organization of the school?).

When students choose for themselves, they exercise their own agency, which can increase the strength they feel when attempting to express and act upon their own goals and values.

Student confidence

Confidence is often seen as something that someone either has, or doesn’t have, as if the belief in oneself was a static perception that was either present or not present at birth. However, we know from Carol Dwek’s work on the Growth Mindset that our intelligence and our sense of self evolve over time, and that our self-perception is never at a fixed point. Respected and caring adults in students’ lives have the amazing power to influence students’ perceptions of themselves and others.

There are varied ways to build student confidence, including consistent use of authentic writing tasks, reading choice, and repeated reading practices. Increasing student confidence is complex, requiring innovation and persistence from students as they move toward their educational goals, as well as from teachers on behalf of their students.

Educators can make choices to provide an array of differentiated reading and writing tasks, integrating student voice and choice into the mix and building their confidence with each new learning opportunity.

Required readings, assignments, and projects can be shared at the start of a school year, semester, or unit and teachers can then support students in finding their unique and desired ways to process and express their connections to the reading and writing

Valuing a student’s home language and utilizing it as a linguistic tool to problem solve, communicate, and access materials develop students’ literacy skills and self‐confidence. Even in situations where younger students are learning English as a Dual Language, their ability to negotiate the language will have a major impact on their motivation to read and write, or to not read and write. The same can apply to older students who are learning English as a New Language. Whatever the age or nuanced way of referring to learning a new language, when language creates a barrier to entry, students are more likely to give up than they are to keep trying. 

When students new to learning English can talk with their classmates in their home language, think through complex ideas in their home language, write out their notes in their home language — they’ll have increased confidence in their understanding of the concepts and can, as a separate task, get to work on translating their ideas into English. 

Success cycles are built when educators better understand how to design their instructional tasks to incorporate opportunities for student voice, agency and confidence.

Download the white paper: Centering Students for Literacy Engagement: Voice, Choice & Identity, A Review of Literature for Behind the Book, conducted by the Center for Professional Education of Teachers at Teachers College, Columbia University. 


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Low-stakes, high-reward discussion practices you can bring to your math classroom.  

Most teachers I know recognize the importance of discussion in their classrooms, but often struggle with how to best facilitate student-to-student discussions, particularly in a content area classroom like math.

As a former elementary educator, I was responsible for teaching all subject areas — Reading, Writing, Math, Science and Social Studies. Math was always my most reluctant subject. When it came time to teach math, I was guilty of sitting in front of the whiteboard, doing practice problem after practice problem with my students, asking if they had any questions, and then sending them off to their desks to do more practice problems in their workbooks. I could tell they were bored (heck, I was bored), but I was unsure how to shift my teaching to make it more engaging and student-centered.

I was compelled by the idea that practice makes perfect, right? So the more problems they practice, the more likely they’d be to get it. But the drill and kill approach is not adequate, especially in classrooms today, and as we think about the necessary skills of students in the 21st century. We know they need much more to acquire skills and knowledge that will serve them in real life. They need to be able to talk about math, reflect on their processes, and collaboratively problem-solve.    

What is Math Talk? 

​One of my recent areas of focus and interest is helping math teachers incorporate more discussion in their classrooms and move away from the often well-intentioned chalk and talk approach.  

“Math Talk,” while a rather new term, is gaining in popularity, as research suggests that when students talk more about their math thinking, they are more motivated to learn and they learn more. It is one of the mathematical practices of the NGS that supports students in clarifying their thinking and understanding, constructing mathematical arguments, developing language to express math ideas, and increasing opportunities to see things from different perspectives.

How can teachers promote this challenging yet crucial mathematical practice in their classrooms? What I share below are three simple, yet effective strategies that can promote math talk in meaningful and manageable ways.

Turn and Talks

Turn and talks are a well-known and commonly used strategy. They support oral language, speaking, and listening skills in a low-stakes way. Math can often promote a lot of fear, and fear of getting it wrong. But because students are talking to a partner, there is often less hesitation than if they had to speak to a larger group. Turn and talks can be a great entry point to promoting discussion. 

Gallery Walks

Gallery walks are another simple yet meaningful technique to support discussion. These support students in being actively engaged as they walk throughout the classroom, and they can be highly effective in problem-solving within a math classroom. 

Similar to a turn and talk, a gallery walk could be the focus of the Do Now, as part of guided practice in preparation for independent work, or it can serve as the independent work after some explicit instruction. 

Think - Pair - Share

Think-Pair-Share can support students in working together to increase understanding and explore multiple perspectives. Like turn and talks, it is a partner strategy that can be a nice entry point to promoting discussion as its low-stakes and a bit easier for the teacher to manage participation of students. It can be done as part of a Do Now, to review a particular skill, to assess work that is already completed, or as part of independent practice as students apply what they’ve learned. 

By no means do I consider myself a math expert; however, I do have extensive experience in promoting discussion in all disciplines. While these strategies are not new or revolutionary, I have witnessed how even small moves can shift instruction to allow for more student interaction and application. I hope you find them helpful as you consider how you can maximize discussion in your classroom, and remember that any of these can be a starting place — as you boost your confidence and experience success, I encourage you to consider your own twists and share them with others.