C110 (Book Club): Laying the foundation for the Expert Effect

Welcome to the #CITLreads Book Club for The Expert Effect by Grayson McKinney and Zach Rondot.  I am so excited to explore this book through my podcast and appreciate the authors for indulging my connections and reflections. 

Choosing Your Roles

​Something we do differently in our book club is that we use a variety of roles to guide our practice.  Last year, we were sparked by this process using the Pop-Up Studio book club kit by Misty Paterson.  This year, we are modifying the process through the lens of the IB Approaches to Learning or ATL and Kath Murdoch’s skill that focuses on being a Contributor.  Here are our roles. 

Think about the role you will take as you go through this week’s episode and how it will shape the lens that you view the content.  We are modeling best practice, so we can replicate it with our learners.  Even our early years learners can engage in a modified form to get them thinking about roles in our reading.  

Examples in Action

• Communicator:  I share my ideas with others with confidence
• Contributor:  I connect my ideas to my school, home, and community, so I can take action
• Researcher:  I find ideas through books, videos, pictures, and other people
• Self-Manager:  I think about how to use ideas and materials, so I can be balanced
• Socializer:  I have relationships with others, so I can grow
• Thinker:  I solve problems with others and think about it

Start with WHY

Grayson and Zach remind us to start with our WHY as educators as discussed in Simon Sinek’s video, How Great Leaders Inspire Action.  I’ve referred to this model at the beginning of my podcast series in the Five Day Inquiry Challenge.  

Think about our school year, some of us are half way through while others are transitioning towards summer holidays.  Try to answer this question: 

​There were many ideas that stayed with me, but it was always founded on our passion to shape young learners.  I believe that all teachers have this motivation at the heart of their practice.  The main thing to consider is how do we share our “WHY” on those difficult days?  This is difficult for everyone, but we all need to find our way to take care, so our “WHY” does not fizzle out over time. 

Defining an Expert

​What is the success criteria that someone is an “expert” at something? Our book club attempted to define this using a Frayer model in small groups.  It was really interesting to hear everyone’s interpretations of what an expert looked like and what they did to show their expertise.  The real aha came, when I shared Grayson and Zach’s definition.

E is for Experienced:  “We want our learners to hear from the people who have made mistakes and learned from them, not some self-proclaimed, know-it-all, perfect guru.”

X is for eXciting;  “No matter what subject, if we have a passionate expert, kids will get excited too, creating a positive effect on the entire learning process.

P is for Purposeful:  “We do not want you connecting your students with experts just for the sake of doing it; it must be purposeful to the content in your classroom.”

E is for Empowering:  “Connecting them with experts empowers them to keep the dream alive or create a new vision for their future.”

R is for Real:  “We want experts to have real-life experience to talk about and uncover the relevance.”

T is for Talk to Kids:  “We must find people who can speak on a level your children can understand, relate to, and learn from.”

​As I look at these definitions, I plan to use it as a success criteria in selecting experts to use with learners in the future.  It’s so important that we find the right people who will connect with our learners in our varying contexts. 

Essential Agreements

To begin the process of engaging with experts, we need to set some ground rules of how we act and what we do to prepare for these learning situations.  In the PYP, we call these essential agreements.  

It was fun to listen to various ways that fellow educators inspire their learners to create essential agreements in their classrooms.  Kath Murdoch shared a strategy a few years ago that stayed with me and made such a positive impact in my learning community.
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• Brainstorm a list of essential agreements
• Type and print the list onto sentence strips
• Have learners vote for their favorites by placing stickers on the various strips
• The top 6-8 become the essential agreements

​This process allows for more learner ownership and acceptance of the positive and negative consequences, because they created them. 

​Name-Describe-Act

​We concluded our session using the PZ visible thinking routine, Name Describe Act.  Think about your practice and answer these questions.