Adaptive Strategies

Ochan Kusuma-Powell is leading Adaptive Schools sessions at Singapore American School.  Top of mind at day's end is how she facilitated conversations while at the same time naming and noting the strategies (protocols) she used to do so.

Dr. Powell framed the strategies we used with what, why and how and as soon as she'd reviewed those keys and released us to do, she would create visual reminders of our doing and or circle the room, listening in and gathering connections she would use in the next transition.

Listening, paraphrasing, connecting, probing, modeling, all moves Dr. Powell made during our session today. She reminds me to slow down, to pause, to use space, movement and silent cues to facilitate processing. She cited work from one of my favorite thinkers and several new-to-me that I'm looking forward to looking up and adding to my professional reading.  I'm still processing all I learned today from the "triple track" of our agenda.

I tried to capture the strategies she used for bringing us into conversations with various groups-- no doubt, I missed some, but here is a place holder list for now.

Strategy	Purpose
Audience Connect	Welcoming, forming learning community
Listening for the Lull	Facilitation Move: listening for natural lulls and using them to transition to the next activity
Hand Signal	Facilitation Move:  transition signal: at the signal partners or groups can “finish their sentences but not their paragraphs”
Like Me	Welcoming, Inclusion activity, create connections
What | Why | How	Patterns for learning, predictable framing, create boundaries and safe spaces
Attention First	Facilitation Move: Visible, posturing and pausing in order to close an activity, express appreciation and transition.
Small Fires Group	Small group processing, build connections within the larger group, create safe spaces for sharing
Grounding	Set the ground rules for small fires groups
Debriefing content & process	Facilitation Move: Processing for learning, reflecting to learn
Penny Payout	Text processing, ranking ideas prior to sharing, sorting | prioritizing what and how to share
Corners	(paried with Penny Payout) Text processing, selecting portion of text to discuss based on rankings
Line Up	Regrouping activity, inclusion activity, learning about one another, building relationship
Number Off	Facilitation Move: To remix table groups; to assign parts to read for Jigsaw
Stack & Pack	Facilitation Move: Moving from one group | table to another
Station naming	Facilitation Move: Returning to the agenda to name where the group has been and where the group is
Most Important Point (MIP)	Processing after breaktime to summarize learning and thinking
Jigsaw	Text reading, processing and teaching
Finger partners	Moving out of Jigsaw home groups to number alike groups to rehearse information
Journal	Individual, written processing
Fractal Partners	Regrouping activity
A | B Each Teach	Partnered text processing and teaching

*links from the Adaptive Schools Livebinder by pciganick