Second Grade Artifacts

Here are thinking routines that were done in our second grade classrooms.

The second grade team is currently focusing on imbedding visible thinking strategies into our science unit of study on matter. To begin, each classroom used several chalk talk questions to probe students' thinking. 

While students love this routine because it gives every thinker a voice, I have found that the conversations after the 'chalk talk' are more meaningful than the routine itself. Through our conversations debriefing each question we discovered misconceptions, connections, and prior knowledge. We made an anchor chart that will guide our learning through the unit and listed the questions we hope to explore. Students were also given the opportunity to reflect on the kind of thinking that was happening during chalk talk and how they have grown with using this routine throughout the year.

"It used to be hard to do this without talking, and now it is much easier."

"It's frustrating when people disagree with you and you can't explain to them your own thinking right away."

"It's cool to see that other people think what I think."

"I noticed more people were making connections between ideas."

I was really pleased to see that so many of the students were challenging one another to "prove it" and "tell me more" and they were complimenting one another for their thinking!