Mark Church of Harvard Runs Faculty Workshops on Making Thinking Visible

“If classrooms are going to be rich cultures of thinking for our students, then schools must be rich cultures of thinking for educators.”

On Monday and Tuesday, 18 teachers participated in a series of workshops with Mark Church, our learning consultant from Harvard, and co-author of Making Thinking Visible. As part of our school's reflection on this year's theme, Deliberate Moral Introspection, the sessions focused on “How do we frame the story of thinking and learning at Saint David’s?"

Mark shared the Understanding Map, which was developed by Harvard Project Zero. The map identifies a number of high leverage thinking moves that people use to solve problems.

These thinking dispositions are representative of the types of thinking that lead to deeper understanding. For instance, when studying history, Considering Different Viewpoints and Reasoning with Evidence are certainly essential. In math, when solving an algebraic equation, Making Connections and Uncovering Complexity are key moves to consider. Teachers can use the Understanding Map as a planning tool to determine the “thinking agenda” for their units of study.

The 18 teachers in the seed group routinely meet throughout the school year to discuss teaching and learning, and examine ways they can make thinking more visible in their classrooms.

These professional learning teams stimulate and fuel our teachers’ practice, creating a rich culture of thinking for our teachers and boys.

Comments

OLIVER!

This morning our fifth graders continued a great year-end tradition at Saint David's, The Fifth Grade Musical. The boys performed Oliver! and they were fantastic, providing impressive performances and demonstrating great vocal ability. They have been mastering the dialogue and musical numbers for weeks, and clearly gave it their all. Congratulations to the cast on a job well done, and to their Producers/Teachers James Hubbard and Jamie MacNeille, Director Phyllis Clark, Musical Conductor Jeff Moore, and the Parent Committee of Cynthia Chapman, Susan Kissane, Tara Neumann, Joyce Restituto, and Ann Roberts. Musical theater is alive and well at Saint David's!

Sixth Graders Meet with Dr. Carter Emmart, Director of Astrovisualization at the American Museum of Natural History

Dr. Carter Emmart with Saint David's Sixth Graders This past Friday, as part of our unique partnership with the American Museum of Natural History, sixth graders had the great honor to attend a private lecture given by Carter Emmart, Director of Astrovisualization at AMNH. Dr. Emmart told the boys about his passion for science along with an overview of the history of the Hayden Planetarium. He also gave the boys advice on how to take scientific information about the universe and compile it into an interesting and captivating show for an audience. The boys were able to see Dr. Emmart's original sketches, which helped create the Uniview program they are using to develop their presentations. The session provided our boys with an opportunity to learn how art and science come together in the planetarium, and to obtain expert advice on developing their own space shows from one of the creators of Uniview . You can learn more about Dr. Emmart's work and Univie...

Tales of a Good Man

"Sometime in the midst of all this, we became friends. And his story, and all its vast world passed into mine." --From the Introduction of Blood & Oil by Roxane Farmanfarmaian. "Stories are so important; they become traditions that tell about the good that often comes out of bad experiences..." So began Roxane Farmanfarmaian's fascinating talk Monday night at Saint David's Seventh Grade Father-Son Dinner. Dr. Farmanfarmaian, Affiliated Lecturer of Modern Middle East Studies at the Political and International Studies Department at Cambridge University, was introduced by her nephew, Saint David's seventh grader Cyrus '17. She spoke to the seventh grade boys and their fathers about what makes a "Good Man" through the prism of her book Blood & Oil : A Prince's Memoir of Iran from the Shah to the Ayatollah (Random House 2005), which she co-authored with her late father, Prince Manucher Farmanfarmaian. The memoir i...

Headmaster's Blog

Search This Blog