ABSTRACT
Students are mostly able to express their own ideas. In late March Christy meets with Tanya, a first-grade teacher, to plan their literacy coaching time together. The teachers begin the inquiry by setting up a provocation for the class to notice and wonder about how the silent e works at the end of words. There is evidence, however, that with Christy’s facilitation, the students are able to listen and link their ideas. With Christy’s support, the students tested the “silent/bossy e” rule in the context of the word landscape, and started to push against each other’s ideas about how the rule works and what it means. In order to grapple with important ideas and move everyone’s thinking forward, students must learn to really listen, understand, and respond to each other’s thinking. Learning to connect to other people’s ideas takes time and purposeful practice.
