Think back to second or third grade. What did you learn that is useful to you today? Reading and writing are valuable, of course. How to add and subtract help you—especially if you don’t have a calculator.
However, the traditional “three Rs” were only a small part of your education. Then as now, the crucial lesson for children in the early grades was learning how to learn. Good learning skills are the foundation for success in high school or college or on the job.
Harvard Elementary School (HES) has recently introduced two new programs that help students become better learners, both in school and in the wider world.
HES is piloting a program called Habits of Mind that is based on the research of educators Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick. Habits of Mind is “the gold standard for developing 21st-century skills,” according to Superintendent Thomas Jefferson.
Habits of Mind comes as a response to the mandate in the strategic plan for Harvard public schools to develop a set of thinking skills that teachers can foster throughout the curriculum. As described by teacher Elizabeth Egan, who has piloted the program in fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms and with special-education students, “This is a philosophy, not just a program or a tool kit.”
The open-ended list now includes 16 mental skills or habits, including persisting, managing impulsivity, listening with understanding, thinking flexibly, striving for accuracy, applying past knowledge to new situations, and even finding humor.
Egan explains that when she teaches a writing workshop, she presents the writing assignment and then talks with the class about one of the skills—in this case, communicating with clarity and precision. Students learn to ask themselves: what is the clearest, most precise word to use here? What one idea do I want to express with this sentence? The children can use these same skills in their reading as they interpret stories and poems, asking themselves why the author chose one particular word from a range of possibilities.
Over the past year, teachers in Harvard have been trained in ways to make these habits an integral part of the curriculum. On a professional day last year, teachers at both Bromfield and HES were introduced to the program in workshops. Bromfield faculty members have elected to develop their own set of critical thinking skills, but teachers at HES believe that Habits of Mind is a good fit for their curriculum.
There’s a real need to address the very top kids. They need to be challenged as much as anyone else. Otherwise you’re boring them to death.
—Lauren Crittendon, second grade teacher
Over this summer, Egan and five other HES teachers received advanced training in the Habits of Mind program at Tufts University. After the training, media specialist Peggy Harvey, fourth-grade teacher Maryanne Cheveralls, and Egan prepared a four-year plan to extend the Habits of Mind approach to all grades and curriculum areas at HES.
HES Principal Mary Beth Banios also attended a two-day workshop specifically for administrators. She noted that Habits of Mind has an international reputation, and educators from Ireland and Chile, as well as many parts of the United States are using it.
Banios explains that the plan this year is to start working with teachers to select three of the skills to emphasize in the entire school. She notes that students’ understanding of each mental habit can deepen as they mature. From considering what persistence means in their own experience, for example, they can move on to thinking about what it means in a wider world—what persistence meant to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the civil rights movement, for example.
It’s no surprise that students are using computers more and more during the school day. But it may be surprising to learn that, as early as second grade, students can create a profile of their own interests, so that a computer can direct them to projects or videos matched to those preferences.
The Renzulli Learning program was developed by Joseph Renzulli and Sally M. Reis at the University of Connecticut to help teachers provide “differentiated instruction”—that is, instruction tailored to individual students’ learning styles. The program’s motto, according to its website, is “No Child Left Bored.”
Three of second-grade teacher Lauren Crittendon’s students were so advanced in math last year that they had already mastered most of the curriculum. “There’s a real need to address the very top kids,” she notes. “They need to be challenged as much as anyone else. Otherwise you’re boring them to death.”
So Crittendon set those three students up with the Renzulli program. At the computer, they answered questions about their interests by putting a smiley face next to a preferred activity on a list. For example, would they rather earn money by starting a lemonade stand or taking care of a dog? Would they rather act in a play or write a play? Once students created their profiles, they had hundreds of choices of projects, e-books, “virtual field trip” videos, and more.
Two of Crittendon’s students were interested in sports, math, and technology. They chose a math project to find out whether people could jump rope better with their eyes open or closed, with shoes on or off. They enlisted their classmates as test subjects, counted jumps with all the variables, and then organized their data on an Excel spreadsheet. Using their data, Crittendon taught them the concept of “average,” an advanced topic for second-graders but directly related to their work.
Crittendon reports that other students in the class became interested in doing Renzulli projects after taking part in the jump-rope experiment. By the end of the year, everyone in the class was using the program in the computer lab. Crittendon especially liked the way students got involved in one another’s projects. “It was not isolating, the way computer work can sometimes be, with students all in their own bubbles,” she explains.
While the program was initially developed as enrichment for advanced students, its focus on individual interests encourages broader use. All students do their best work, Crittendon points out, when they are presented with material on topics that interest them.
Fifth-grade teacher Sangita Marya agrees, saying, “It is a great motivator.” In her classroom, she used the Renzulli program primarily for enrichment. “I found and bookmarked activities for them that supported the curriculum.” Students who finished in-class work early could turn to enrichment activities on the computer. She notes, “I also used Renzulli during targeted instruction block by bringing in the laptop cart and having students work on math, social studies and/or science enrichment activities. I would introduce the activity on the Smartboard and then the students would work on it.”
Marya points out that many of her students used the program at home, as well. Renzulli Learning has links to more than 40,000 websites that are “educationally sound, age-appropriate, relevant, and safe,” according to its own website. Parents can also log on to see their children’s profiles or the projects and activities that their children have used.