#johnantonetti — Public Fediverse posts

The Best PD…

is the one that not only speaks to you in the moment but also stays with you and becomes part of your process.

I first heard of John Antonetti and his work in the 2020-2021 school year. I’m sure I’ve written about this before, but it hit me this week just how much his work has become part of my planning.

John is the author/co-author of several books: Writing as a Measure and Model of Thinking, 17,000 Classroom Visits Can’t Be Wrong, Powerful Task Design, and the upcoming The Architecture of Thinking, which I am anxiously awaiting.

I was introduced to his work through the Missouri Teacher Development System’s Teachers Academy. I’ve read all three of his existing books at least twice. I’ve now been fortunate enough to see him speak virtually twice and in person five times, soon to be six. I’ve presented PD sessions on his work twice.

His rigor matrix lives in my head. I find myself asking how I can +1 this task at least once a week. My partner and I were creating a connections game on Flippity after the history teachers introduced us to it. I loved the idea, but I started thinking about where it would fall on the rigor matrix, and since there are set answers, obviously it’s below the rigor divide. My next thought was: how can I +1 the activity? My first thought was to give the kids the terms only on paper rather than on the computer and let them sort the words and create their own categories. Almost immediately afterwards, I decided the kids could make their own connections board. So, I created a doc with a table for them to do just that. We’re going to try that either later this week or next.

This week we’re doing hexagonal thinking. I’ve seen it but hadn’t actually used it in class. I think I was hesitant because all of the examples I’d seen required providing all of the words for the kids. Then, this summer at a PD session, we did HT, but we were given a prompt first and wrote a word or phrase on a blank hex. That sparked my interest. So my partner and I are doing HT on superheroes this week. We are including a blank for each student. She then suggested that kids each get an additional word or two and go add them to another group’s layout. Both the blank and adding to someone else’s raise the rigor.

I love that I’ve found something that means I can often make a small change and increase the rigor and engagement of thinking. I can’t wait to see John in a few weeks and learn from him again. I can’t wait to read the new book he’s writing with Terri Stice and see what else I can add to my classroom routines to help my students improve their thinking.