Dwelling in Ideas

In Chapter 4 of Keene’s book, she states, “When I teach, I try to model how it looks like to take that time, silently, right in the middle of a lesson, in front of the children.” (77) This makes instruction more specific and children will retain and reapply what they learned in an easier way. Keene discusses how classroom time is spent on so much lecturing and instruction that we forget, as a teacher, to have students think quietly to themselves and listen deeply to other conversations. Keene discusses, “In our frantically paced classrooms, I worry that our children don’t have the time they need to dwell in ideas in silence, to purposefully reflect on an aspect of text or a social studies or science concept they are learning.” (77) We give children on average 4-9 seconds to respond to a question, but how would you like it if you were being timed to answer a question with a meaningful and intelligent answer? I know I would not want too. “When we assume that kids aren’t doing high-level thinking, we may need to consider whether the conditions we create are conductive to high-level thinking.” (77) I agree with Keene, we need to give the children in our classroom more time to think!