As Lisa Krebs introduces her 9th graders to To Kill a Mockingbird, she also introduces them to the concept of schema. Students develop the notion that they all have schema from what they have learned and lived to help them solve reading problems.
Classroom Videos
Precalculus
Richard Abdelkerim wants his Precalculus students to engage on a conceptual level even with procedure-oriented topics. In this session, students collaborate to assemble their understanding of why (not just how) they might use row echelon form to solve a system of equations.
First Year Seminar
Shelagh Rose’s First Year Seminar students engage in Think Aloud to begin reading an academic, peer-reviewed article. They are learning to leverage their own and their peers’ prior knowledge, and to actively problem solve with academic texts. Ultimately, they are empowered to bring their own perspectives, questions, and concerns to college coursework.
Academic Literacy, Grade 9
Students in Cindy Ryan’s academic literacy class practice Thinking Aloud in a whole class metacognitive conversation. These students have shed self-consciousness about being confused, and may instead ask each other, “How did you figure that out?”
General Physics
The students in Lilit Haroyan’s General Physics class are accustomed to surfacing their confusion. Their instructor asks them to use one another and their texts as resources to make sense of physics concepts. As they do so, they engage the scientific literacy practice of using texts, diagrams, and equations to understand a concept.
Life Science, Grade 7
Many of the students in Pam Moore’s Life Science class are English learners or former English learners. Pam wants her students to read texts for science inquiry. We see Pam model her reading processes spotlighting the questioning. The students take up reading, posing questions, and sharing them with each other and with the class.