Kids Care Who their Audience Is

It was interesting to see how my CT handled a problem that came up with the sixth grade students. Some of the students had gotten carried away writing their fictional stories. Their stories included violent scenes where they had used the names of their friends in class - for example, "A sea monster came along and ripped Ralph's head off."



Their intention was to make each other laugh - it was silly, gratuitous violence; I would call it going for a "cheap laugh."


My CT handled it with authenticity and in a well-considered way when she talked with the students. In speaking to me about it, she said she understood that 
some of this is fitting with the kids' development stage. 
But the thing she said that got an audible groan from the kids was that some of them must have forgotten that the sixth graders would be reading their completed stories to their third grade buddies.

It was amazing to see how instantly the kids were able to understand how inappropriate some of their stories were after they got that piece of information. The sixth graders love their reading buddies, so they did care about the effect their writing could have on them. With some guidelines for revision, they were able to make the stories o.k. for the little kids (e.g., bullets become marshmallows). It was such a nice example of the power of knowing who you are writing for.

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Good Questions

I’m thinking about how much we assume about kids. I keep going back to Vivian Paley and her talent for connecting with kids in a meaningful, non-judgmental way. In You Can’t Say You Can’t Play, she asked students at her school for advice about the rule she was interested in implementing in her kindergarten class. How often do we ask kids for advice?

My third grade reading/writing buddy, Miss C, is very bright and creative.  After we met and chatted a while, I asked her what she thought about spelling as a subject, since I was about to have her do a spelling exercise. She said, “I’m really good at spelling but it’s boring because it doesn’t give me much to work with.” It turns out she is quite articulate about what is challenging, boring, or interesting to her at school, and she is able to describe her learning strategies, too. I hadn’t anticipated getting this much good information from such a simple question.

In the article “The Power of Questions,” the author, teacher Annie Huynh, would find one of her third grade students, Natalie, “frequently talking or staring around the room [instead of reading].” Ms. Huynh decided to sit down with Natalie and talk with her about reading rather than applying more classroom management techniques to get her to stay “on task.” Together they uncovered information more likely to help the student choose books that are suited to her interests.

Why would a student take the risk to allow us access to their thoughts and feelings unless we have earned it by forging respectful relationships with them? I would love to hear examples you have seen of questions that elicited meaningful answers from kids, or examples of questions that shut kids down instead. I will look for examples in the comments section.

Thanks, and cheers.