Ten Things We Should Say Everyday (and Why They're Important)

Sydney Church of England Grammar is also known as the 'Shore School'

Earlier this year I attended the Project Zero conference at the Sydney Church of England Grammar School. It was ace, and I've already written about some of the other professional learning I did there on feedback processes and pushing for depth in student thinking. The conference itself was a great opportunity and saw over 500 people in attendance from the full gamut of Australian schools - state schools, independent schools, religious schools, and other educational sectors - and I recommend checking it out the next time it comes around.

One of the keynote lectures drew on the concept of a culture of thinking, with Dr Ron Ritchhart speaking quite passionately about the joy of 'learning together' and defining a culture as a shared language that represents a collective way of thinking. In the case of a learning culture, Dr Ritchhart identified several cultural forces that can shape this shared language:

• Routines
• Opportunity
• Modelling
• Time
• Interactions
• Environment
• Language
• Expectations

In the specific case of modelling, Dr Ritchhart elaborated further by describing this as demonstrating good practice and thinking aloud. More particularly, modelling of exemplar responses allows students to explicitly see how teacher cognition works, and - in the words of the great educator Vygotsky - lets "Children grow into the intellectual life around them". 

And that brings us to the title of this post, the ten things that Dr Ritchhart says we should say to students everyday. I've jotted them down here with his explanations of why they're important.

Dr Ron Ritchhart's presentation ^

1. Hello and Goodbye - all students need to feel known and acknowledged. Disruptive behaviour decreases, learning and engagement increases. Try not to be busy during this transition time while students are entering and leaving the class. 
2. WMYST?: What Makes You Say That? - make this an integral part of the classroom. Ask students this question so that they are forced to become more independent in terms of responding to class activities, providing their own thoughts rather than relying on the teacher's.
3. Talk to me about what you're doing - with this prompt, students are also being asked to make their metacognitive process more visible. Leave it open-ended, let the student find their own way to articulate what they're doing.
4. Here's where we're going with this - purpose is important. When people have a sense of purpose their learning increases dramatically. There is no research supporting 'learning intentions', the research tends to centre around 'purpose' instead, and this is because they aren't the same thing - stating a learning intention may not be as effective or the same thing as the broader purpose of something.
5. Here's the thinking you'll need to do... - when teachers explain an assignment or project to students we tend to get into the logistics by default. Then students fulfill these logistics and are surprised when they do get an A, and some aren't even sure how it happened or how it can be replicated. As teachers we need to keep in mind that i's the thinking that needs to be striven for, not the result.  
6. Let's debrief - new learning is incredibly fragile, so it's important to go over it to help reinforce/consolidate what students have just learned. Students in a high school setting are most often about to move on to another class or activity with completely different demands (for example, once the student finishes English they may be about to move on to their Mathematics or Geography class). One way that Dr Ritchhart highlighted was the 'IQ routine' in which students are invited to give insights and ask further questions at the end of each lesson.
7. I've noticed... - contrast this with 'I liked', which flips attention back onto the teacher. The language of 'I've noticed' is that it's less about turning students into people-pleasers and more about them considering what they've just done as learners. 
8. We - this creates a sense of community with the students.
9. I'm sorry - teachers need to be willing to admit mistakes, rather than seeing apology as a sign of weakness. 
10. Wow! - give students an opportunity to surprise us. Delight in their learning. If there are no 'wow' moments then you're playing too safe. 

More on this can be found on Dr Ron Ritchhart's website here.