Classrooms Are Complex: #CyberPD Dynamic Teaching for Deeper Reading

During the month of July, I will be participating in  #CyberPD as we read In Dynamic Teaching for Deeper Reading Shifting to a Problem-Based Approach by Vicky Vinton.  
Vicky sums up my puzzlement, my yes and, and my yes but, thinking with the following words. 

So when I read, and I found myself shaking my head like yeah or furrowing my brow in befuddlement I knew I was on the right track because classrooms are complex and teaching is most definitely complex!

My first head nod came early when I read the suggestions for tackling complexity, looking at the big picture of a complicated situation rather than the smaller pieces.  I found confidence in this idea because I am a big picture thinker, I work best when looking at the whole and then working backward to figure out the thinking behind the idea.  As I read on and learned the term "elementitis" and I found myself perplexed.  I agree reading is about the author's message, the readers interpretation of the message, and how we take this learning and apply it to our daily lives, big picture thinking, yeah.  Taking our thinking to this level requires background knowledge, inferring skills, questioning, and flexible thinking.  I found myself pondering, can students successfully achieve this deeper thinking if they've not learned and practiced these critical thinking skills in minilessons and guided practice? 

I found myself again nodding my head like yeah, with this quote from Barack Obama,

"When I think about how I understand my role as a citizen, setting aside being the president, the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I've learned I think I've learned from novels.  It has to do with empathy.  It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of grays, but there's still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that.  And the notion that it's possible to connect with someone else even though they're very different from you."

Thinking of readers as citizens who are learning from their reading how to be citizens and to have empathy for others I want them to bring their lives into the pages of a book just like I want them to take the lessons from the author into their lives.  
Chapter Four..." if learning is the ultimate goal, we need to be sure that our teaching methods support how students learn." 

Below are other ideas that stuck with me, I am pondering, and otherwise not yet fleshed out. I am sorry we are heading to the beach, and I want to get this up! #Cyberpd is friendly like this! 

• Students need to know the goal of their learning and learning happens over time- we know it's not a one and done
• Pleasurable learning experiences best achieve student learning. Pleasurable learning= choice, opportunity to explore and discover following their own curiosities. 
• There is no teaching without learning and learning stems from the activities of learners. Our role becomes "one of creating and facilitating opportunities for them to learn through exploration, problem-solving, and discovery." pg 51
• Feedback- from the students perspective- it should feel, as John Hattie puts it "just in time, just for me, just for where I am in the learning, process, and just what I need to help me move forward." 
• The Power of Language- "creates realities and invents identities pg 52

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