This week, an activity that develops careful listening, thinking ahead and thoughtful keywording. It also ties in nicely with the end of term.
Big hat-tip to Brad McCormick of Cap-a-Pie who inspired the set up by delivering something similar in a workshop on Tuesday. And a further hat-tip to whoever Brad took it from!
Activity: Keyword Catchers
Here’s a student-friendly instruction you can read aloud:
Pair up with a friend, and to sit opposite one another. One of you — Partner A — will face towards the board and the other — Partner B — will face the back of the room. Your teacher will give each of you a sticky note.
Partner A, facing the front, asks Partner B the questions you’ll see shortly on the screen or board.
As you listen, take notes of the key words or phrases they use. Do your best to summarise what they’re saying, but without spending a long time looking down. Try to keep eye-contact. You’re jotting things down, rather than writing at length.
(Put these questions on the board or screen):
Looking ahead to the next school year…
What do you want to do more of?
What do you want to do less of?
Partner B, there’s no need to share anything personal. Why not think about clubs, hobbies, school subjects, or even your daily routines?
After the activity:
Once you’ve answered it with as much as you can think of, Partner A will give Partner B their sticky-note summary. Partner A should now ask “Did I miss anything?” and Partner B can write in any other key words or phrases they think should belong on the note.
Swap over and Partner B becomes the questioner, and follow the same process!
Once you’ve both had a go, you keep the summary of what you said. Why not put it somewhere obvious at home to remind yourself of the goals and targets you’ve set for yourself? Or make a note in your calendar to look it again in the coming months so you can check how you’re doing.
The art of “Keywording”
Essentially, to Keyword is to find or choose the most important words in a piece of text, video or presentation. It’s the K in the 26 Thinking Moves.
It’s important because sometimes it’s easy for what is significant to get lost in a mass of words. When you have a lot of information to process or remember, it’s important to be able to pick out what’s essential—the key words that capture the main ideas.
The best Keywording limits the number of words you are ’allowed’ to choose. This will make you think really hard about the meaning of what you’re reading or listening to and you will listen more carefully and more thoughtfully.
Where this came from
This an amalgamation of four ideas:
The paired note-taking was inspired by Brad McCormick, of Newcastle theatre company Cap A Pie, who Tom worked with in a teacher workshop yesterday.
The question was developed in this workshop in conversation with Claire, a teacher soon to be saying goodbye to a class she’d taught for five years.
The “Did I miss something?” comes from an activity in our book on metacognition, Thinking Moves A-Z.
As does the idea of keeping the Sticky note – from Roger Sutcliffe’s activity “Message in Your Pocket.”
Life-reflection questions
These kinds of life-coaching questions can be useful for adults too. I’ve expanded them below if you want to use them for some self-reflection (or make a dinner conversation with your partner/friend/housemate a bit deeper!)
- What do you want to go back to doing?
- What do you want to put behind you?
- What do you hope for?
- What do you want to get better at dealing with?
Like this? Try this
“Did I miss something?” and “Message in Your Pocket” are both activities from Thinking Moves A-Z, our book on metacognition, written with Roger Sutcliffe.
What’s new in the Philosoverse?
Jason is just finishing his annual five-day Outdoor Challenge with Year 8 students from Sutton Grammar School.
Tom has been working with the brilliant Newcastle-based theatre company Cap-a-Pie to deliver workshops to local teachers, and is returning next week to help add more philosophy into their drama workshops. Tom is also busy completing our next minibook – this time for students – called My Metacognitive Journey. This will accompany our Thinking Moves student workshop days. The section above on Keywording is taken fron the first draft of this book. Stay tuned for more!