Figure 19 is A Killer!

Maybe I've been watching too many court shows, but whenever I hear an educator refer to Figure 19, I immediately think of a lawyer submitting evidence in a court case.  "Your Honor, as evidence of our students' lack of metacognitive reading skills, I submit Figure 19." For those of you who do not fall in the category of Texas Reading Teacher, Figure 19 is basically a combination of every higher-level comprehension skill all rolled in to one student expectation or TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills).  It covers everything from author's purpose to inferring to summarizing and making connections.  There's so much packed into this one little gem that we actually have sub-skills broken down into parts A-F.  Though all of Figure 19's goonies are a rough crowd, the real mob bosses are Figure 19 D (inferences) and Figure 19 E (summarizing.) Both of these characters are relentless when it comes to chopping our kids tests scores on state assessments and we need to find a way to get them in check right from the very beginning.

Figure 19 is guilty of murdering our test scores!

It is extremely difficult to teach students how to infer.  Summarizing seems like it would be a bit easier but the way the questions on the state assessment (STAAR) are written, these are actually very tricky questions as well.  We cannot assume that our students know how to do any of these things. We have to explicitly teach the steps for each skill and break them down as much as possible.  We have to practice a lot. But most importantly, we have to teach our students how to think.

How do we do that?  Well, in my opinion, it starts with a very real discussion about metacognition, a term so foreign, my spell-check is telling me that's not a word.  But it is a word, an important one.  Kids need to be aware of their thoughts.  They need to understand the process we go through when we are thinking, particularly, in this case, when we are thinking about reading, and they need to know how to use their own thoughts to determine what others are thinking--such as an author or another student in their class.  This is complicated stuff!  To complicate it even more, we need to start these discussions in kindergarten, or sooner, in order to ensure our students have enough practice before they reach the all important third grade state assessment. State assessments are just a measurement of what the student already knows and we can all agree that these are skills we all need as adults, so if our children do well in these areas on assessments, we can rest assured they are prepared to use these skills in everyday life.

In order to teach metacognitive skills, particularly to little ones, I begin with a lesson about elephants. You may have heard this one before, but perhaps not in the same light. I tell them to think about elephants and I give them lots of scenarios to consider--elephants on skateboards, elephants playing guitar, elephants with big floppy hats on.  Then, I tell them, "In just a few seconds, I'm going to tell you that you may not think of elephants for 10 seconds.  You may not think about elephants on skateboards or with hats on.  You may not think about elephants playing guitar.  It will be difficult because you are going to want to think about elephants.  But you cannot think about elephants. Ready, set, go!"  Then, I count to ten in my head and ask them what they were thinking about. Most of them will say elephants but a few will try to pretend that they were thinking about something else.  I explain that I was trying not to think about elephants, but that as soon as I started to think about something else, I remembered not to think about elephants, and the next thing I knew, I had an elephant creeping into my mind.  They all laugh and beg to try again.  Why?  Because it is a challenge, it's fun and silly.  Kids like that stuff.  But the real important part of the lesson comes next.  We talk about how they were paying attention to what they were thinking about.  We talk about seeing pictures in our mind and what was happening when an elephant would try to sneak his way in to that picture.  I tell them, "This is called metacognition.  It means thinking about your thinking. It is very important to pay attention to what is going on inside of your brain when you are reading a book or listening to someone talk because we need to know what we are thinking about in order to  grow our brains and think even deeper."  

Don't think about elephants!

Over time, kids start to understand this. They model the language that we use.  When reading aloud, good teachers pause and say things like, "Do you know what I'm thinking?"  or "I'm imaging. . . ."  They describe the movie they are making in their mind. They ask the questions kids don't even know to ask. They wonder about characters' feelings and motivation. Eventually, you will hear their little voices echoing your own phrases.  This is like magic! They will start asking those questions we've always wanted to hear come out of their little mouths. "Why did the Hungry Caterpillar eat all that yucky food? Didn't he know it was going to make his tummy hurt?" That leads to answers from other kids! "Maybe he ate it because his mom didn't tell him he couldn't.  I would eat lots of junk food,  too, if my mom didn't stop me."  Real world connections, inferences, predictions--if you model it, they will get it!

The bottom line is, we cannot ask "knowledge" and "understand" level questions and expect to grow "analyze" and "synthesize" level kids. It isn't going to happen. Our classrooms need to be Think Tanks in the sense that there's a whole lot of thinking going on in there.  We no longer have the luxury of saying kids "learn to read" in K-2 and "read to learn" in 3-12.  We have got to teach them to read to learn from the very beginning.  These skills go hand-in-hand, we can teach them simultaneously.  It will take more preparation on our part. We must think of better questions than, "What color was the caterpillar?" but we can do that because we are amazing at what we do! It's our job to curtail feisty Figure 19 and keep our kiddo's test scores--and their brains!--out of harms way.

I would love to hear about your metacognitive skills lessons!  If you leave a comment as anonymous,  for some reason, those are not showing up.  I've checked that my settings say anonymous comments are welcome but it's not working so please use a name--even if  it's fake!