Disruption in the hallway!

It has begun and it is awesome. My 4th and 5th grade colleagues and I read Disrupting Thinking by Kylene Beers & Robert E. Probst this summer and are determined to disrupt the thinking of our students this year! So, the first time I went into the classroom to do book talks, I announced that "I am here to disrupt your thinking!" Puzzled looks ... tilted heads ... crickets.

So I proceeded to tell them that a good book should disrupt your thinking ... it should make you stop and ask "What?" or "Did I really just read that?" or "This character is just so awesome!" As I finished each book talk, I asked the students what part of the book talk "disrupted their thinking" and why? Students began talking about this and even using the word "disrupt" while they were talking. We were feeling pretty excited. In addition, teachers have been reading Ban this Book by Alan Gratz and they are continually asking students to disrupt their thinking about the events of the book. The kids are totally into it.

But the real excitement came the next day when we heard a student say, in the hallway and totally unsolicited by a teacher, that the poem they read "really disrupted my thinking." And she was right on the money because it was a poem that had you believing one thing and by the end of the poem, it twisted to a different idea. Score!

And then, on Friday, I was doing some work with a small group. This is a group that gets reading support from our Reading Specialist. She and I are working together this year to ensure that these students find books that they can read and enjoy and, most importantly, finish and be able to talk about beyond the obligatory summary. Once we had gotten books in the students' hands, they sat down to read for the final 10 minutes of our group. Suddenly, I heard "Wait! Where's Mom?" from a student. Then with a look of total surprise on his face he said, "Wow! I just disrupted my thinking. I was wondering how come Mom wasn't in the car with Brock and his dad." Man, I wish I had that on film.