Making First Attempts In Learning “Safe”!

It’s interesting how a year-end reflection with my grade 8s just before their graduation and my move to Brock University transported us right back to the first day of school in September! As a “thank you” gift students prepared a slideshow with personal messages that conveyed how they felt about the year with me. One of my students wrote, “From the first day you made us all feel welcomed and smart.”

Now you’re probably wondering, what did I do with them that first day? Well, this was my second year back in the classroom after time as a board level Literacy & Science consultant and a secondment in a provincial literacy role. It was time for me to implement all the learning I had from working in those roles. So we began the year with a science activity! You might actually be familiar with it, “Drops of Water on a Coin.” Typically this activity lasts one period and engages students in making observations while challenging them to get the most water drops on their coin. Starting off similarly we began with the “Observe and Wonder” Thinking Routine. My students were excited to be doing science on the first day of school and they had lots of wonderings when asked how we might get more drops of water on the coin. “What if … we used the other side of the coin? Used an American coin? Cleaned the coin? Heated the water? Used an older coin? Used a newer coin?”

The next day I decided to push this activity further. It was the first week of school after all, which for me is all about building relationships, establishing expectations and developing the tone for the year! I introduced the “Question Sorter” strategy to immerse students in the “Sort & Categorize” Thinking Routine. Students sorted the class wonderings into 3 categories: Testable, Researchable and Ponderable Questions.

Over the course of the next few days we would work with each of these wondering categories. During Language Arts time we explored researchable questions like “Why do the drops of water stick together?” and “Why do they form a dome?” We discussed ponderable questions related to water in our world like, “Why does water look like it’s climbing up the side of a glass?”

During science time pairs of students further developed a testable question of their choice into “if… then…” statements to try out, operating within the “Predict & Infer” Thinking Routine to predict outcomes. Students were analyzing, interpreting and comparing their data and talking about the need to try again! We talked about conducting multiple trials, about sources of error in the results and we applied this thinking to the importance of conducting a fair test.

By the end of the week not only had students had a double dose of knowledge building for science and everyday life but they had also carried through the whole process of the five Thinking Routines to guide their work! This seemingly simple little activity had stretched students’ thinking, built their confidence and demonstrated to me that automating the Thinking Routines as procedural knowledge had real value!

This is what prompted the year end reflection I shared at the start. And it is how science and other explorations worked in my classroom from then on. The five Thinking Routines supported my students in their “First Attempts In Learning” (F.A.I.L.) and made it safe to try regardless of the outcome. We continued to use the Fail-Safe Literacy Strategies throughout the year as scaffolds for developing these Thinking Routines which were guiding my planning and their learning! And the result was that by the end of the school year students were tracing back their time with me to a journey that began on the very first day of school! As another student enthusiastically shared in that year-end reflection, “We’ve never done science like this before!”

To begin using the Thinking Routines in your classroom, check out our book:

“Fail-Safe Strategies for Science and Literacy”. Part 1 provides introductory activities for all five Thinking Routines with an anchor chart and assessment tool for each. These activities are a great way to start your school year and get students thinking! You’ll also find the “Drops of Water on a Coin” activity in part 2.

Sandra