Thinking Routines: Chalk Talk

Thinking Routines are patterns or routines that we use to go about learning and growing together as a classroom community.  I love thinking routines and how easily they fit into my everyday teaching.  These thinking routines make student’s thinking visible and help them to communicate their ideas in an effective way. Truly deep and rich thinking and learning goes on during these routines. Today was my very first day trying the Thinking Routine called Chalk Talk.  

In this routine students are given a prompt and silently each student considers the prompt.  They then record their thinking, ideas, connections and comments to other student's thinking.  This was our first attempt at Chalk Talk with my 4th graders.  I wanted to keep this real simple and fun for all my students.  I put a large white-board (a teaching partner got these at Home Depot and it was really cheap!) at each table group.  Each group of students had 45 seconds to write down their thoughts and ideas.  I then rang a bell and the students silently moved to the next table group.  I gave my students 30 seconds to read the comments on each board before they were allowed to write.   

The prompt for today was Generating Free Writing Topics.  My students will be starting a free write routine at the beginning of our writer's workshop.  I just want my students to be able to write without worrying about being graded.  I am really hoping this will get my struggling and reluctant writers to see writing in a different light.  I am allowing them to write about anything they want as long as it is school appropriate.  My students and I are excited to see where our free writing will take us in the near future.