Every family has its traditions and since my children were little, my husband and I have always made it a point to check in with our two boys at dinner by asking them to share their day’s “best” and “worst.” Through the years, we have been regaled with stories about what happened on the bus, school assemblies, games on the playground, and other highs and lows of their daily lives. “Best and worst” has become an important family tradition, but as my children grow older, I wonder if reflecting on the day’s events is enough. Might I need to do more to inspire their conversation and thinking skills? In mulling over my options, I decided to add a new conversation prompt at dinner and follow up “best and worst” with “What’s your new idea?”
When I began this, my children were perplexed. After sharing a story of a music teacher who all but dashed his best friend’s hope of becoming a musician, my sixth grade son, Matthew, looked at me with squinty, confused eyes, “What do you mean, ‘what’s my new idea?’” he asked, almost annoyed at the extra work required of this new layer of thinking. But I coached him to think about why that story struck him as the day’s low. As he began to reflect, he quickly shared that his new idea was that there’s absolutely no truth to the adage “sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you.” He thought out loud about the pain of a punch versus the power of words and he decided that while a bruise or a bump might last for a week, words can stay with people forever.
I was struck by how a simple question had the power to elevate the quality of our conversation and wondered if I had stumbled upon beginner’s luck or if, perhaps, I was witnessing the beginning of a shift. Since beginning this ritual of asking, “What’s your new idea?”, we have had many interesting dinnertime conversations. We have talked about society’s infatuation with movie stars and have formulated the idea that perhaps we need to choose our idols carefully. “Wouldn’t it be better,” my third grade son, Nathan, thought, “if we admired scientists and inventors and other people who help to change the world?” On another occasion, my older son Matthew described his plan to construct a Lego universe, sharing that his big idea was that he’d need to create a capital city because after all, “all roads lead to Rome.”
As we’ve habituated reflecting on our living and learning, I’ve noticed that the practice of asking, “what’s your new idea?” has begun to spill over into other aspects of my children’s lives. One night, my older son announced that his summer reading plan would involve rereading the Harry Potter series. This time, he decided, he would read it much slower and flip back and forth between the pages to find how things connect. (His plan, I swear!) He told us that he had already begun to do this and “he had a new idea.” As he read, he noticed that when everybody else was referring to Voldemort as “You-Know-Who,” Dumbledore’s position was “…I have never seen any reason to be frightened of saying Voldemort’s name” (The Sorcerer’s Stone, p.11) which made him think that there might be some sort of mutual respect between Voldemort and Dumbledore. It is his plan as he continues to reread to follow this theory and see if he finds other places that support this idea about Dumbledore and Voldemort’s relationship.
Time has helped me to realize that our dinnertime conversation is a shift. In fact, it is a shift that mimics the fourth shift of the Common Core Standards that emphasizes text-based responses. When I ask my children “what’s your new idea,” I am prompting them to regard their lives as text and question, analyze, interpret, evaluate, and integrate new ideas. No matter whether individuals do this by thinking about what happened on the playground or closely reading the words or illustrations in a book, the benefit remains the same: they develop a habit for critical thinking. As a conduit to problem solving, innovation, and creativity, critical thinking leads not only to infinitely more interesting dinner conversation, but also to a higher achieving student body and even better, to a more insightful citizenry.
One year recently I assigned “T and R” for homework. This was “Think and Refect” time for 5 nin. This was third grade. I talked about building memory for things that happen in life by reflecting again on what you noticed, what happened or what mattered to you in the day. A mom came and told me about the time she drove her son home from school and he stayed in the car. She asked what he was doing. He said, “I am doing T and R.” The mom, not having heard about this was perplexed and asked him to explain. He did and said, “My teacher says it is good for our brains to spend time thinking about what we learn and do in schools, so I have to do T and R every night for 5 minutes.”
My point in sharing is that we can build “habits of mind” in kids. As humans we are innately programmed to develop habits. The question is what kind of habits…..As a teacher I came to realize that with 3rd graders I often had a big mpact. Besides adding “what’s your inew dea?” to ways we do things in school, wouldn’t it be great if parents bought in and did this at home, too. I tried to foster the home/school connection , not so much in how I got parents to volunteer (they did), but rather to get kids and parents to engage in thinking at home. Besides T and R, I developed a simple vocabulary and writing activity that parents help with and is successful. I built in flexibilty and found ways to help children be excited about new and interesting words. Again, developing a “habit of mind” from a young age.
Using Vygotskian thinking, I learned to offer my students opportunities that some might think too much for 8 and 9 year olds. Yet with support, I found that most rose to the occasion. Aren’t we trying to nurture a hunger for knowledge and ideas? I think the Common Core is tying to get us to shift to that type of classroom environment versus one where we do task after task, pedaling along the curriculuar highway without going deeper. Or ever pausing to think…and consider, what new ideas does this pose, what questions might this answer, what if we actually did what this text or experience suggests, etc. If we want children to do things in a different manner, we need to show them how and start when they are young and eager to move them to a higher level, but with SUPPORT and age appropriate ideas. However the richness of text and ideas should be broadened. Kids can handle more than some people may give them credit for.