66

Chapter VIII
Learning to Help

As students continue to practice the skills for learning and to share their strengths, we targeted our third
learning goal: students will construct an understanding of community around classmates diverse
strengths and capacity for support. I had planned to begin with role plays, through which students
would generate and practice the principles of peer support interactions. After reflecting, however, I
decided to delay this action. Although our role plays would be performed for the entire class, each scene
would only feature two actors, and there would not be enough parts for everyone. While Im sure our
more shy students would have been perfectly happy with this situation, I wanted every student to
practice peer support interactions. By offering every student this kind of experience, we believed they
would be better equipped to analyze key moments in the role plays. We also saw these foundational
activities as an opportunity to scaffold students understanding about how people learn and how to
support others learning. In addition, students could discuss appropriate and inappropriate times to
help. If we tried to teach all of these ideas through role-plays, we ran the risk of overwhelming our
students. By slowly piecing together these concepts, we believed that students would build a stronger
understanding of successful peer support interactions. To organize our thinking, we outlined the
enduring understandings we wanted our students to construct about learning and helping. Then, we
developed activities that could facilitate these understandings.

Table 11: Enduring Understandings and Activities about Learning Strategies,
Helping Strategies, and Guidelines for Peer Support

Enduring Understandings Activities
1. People (including me!) can learn by . . .
- Asking someone for help, especially when that
person can do it really well!
- Practicing.
- Trying to do a little bit more.
- Using resources materials and my smart brain,
e.g. strategies, word wall, books, rhymes, chants
Directed Draw
2. People (including me!) can help by . . .
- Asking questions.
- Showing somebody how to do a little bit.
- Using resources materials and my smart brain.
- Celebrating and using encouraging words.
Optical Illusion Peer Teaching
3. Its okay to help when . . .
- Others ask me for help.
- Ive been working hard.
To Help or Not To Help?
PowerPoint

4. Helping isnt such a great idea when . . . .
- Somebody else is already helping.
- Its getting in the way of my own learning.
- Kids are supposed to be working alone.
- Youre just doing something for someone else.


67

How Do We Learn?

To successfully support someone elses learning, one must have a sense of how people learn. Going
further, school leader Debbie Meier (2002) explains how, when considering prospective teachers, she
looks for a self-conscious reflectiveness about how they themselves learn and (maybe even more)
about how and when they dont learn (p. 142). During our exploration of strengths and growth areas,
students reflected on how they learned various skills, often emphasizing the importance of practice. To
expand students understanding of how people learn, we wanted to provide an experience that
elucidated the learning process.

Learning Strategies

In conversation with our colleagues, we developed four learning strategies that we wanted our
students to recognize. First and foremost, we would encourage students to seek out a helper,
particularly one who exhibits a relevant strength. Tasked with guiding another along their learning
journey, this helper might be referred to in other contexts as a coach, mentor, master, or, a more
knowledgeable other. While working with a helper does not guarantee growth, this relationship offers
new directions for learning. To prepare every Stephanor helping, either in their self-selected strength or
another area, the next enduring understanding would focus on best practices for supporting anothers
learning.

The three other learning strategies were derived from personal experience and common sense, as
opposed to an extensive research. Students often cited practice as the reason for their growth and,
unwilling to dispute the legitimacy of this claim, we confirmed its role in the learning process. Along with
practice, we also stressed the idea of trying a little bit more. In many contexts, we grow by setting
ambitious goals and stretching ourselves beyond what we can already do. The way to learn how to
write a great sentence, says HTH GSE President Rob Riordan, is to write a paragraph. The way to learn
how to write a great paragraph is to write an essay (personal communication, December, 2013). In
short, to learn how to do more, one must try to do more! Finally, in our fourth learning strategy, we
highlighted the importance of resources, both physical and mental. Physical resources might include
pictures, blocks, visual aids around the classroom, or any tangible tools that might facilitate learning.
Mental resources refer to thinking patterns that might aid learning. A pneumonic device, for instance,
might remind a student how to round numbers while a reading strategy might help a student decode a
tricky word. Students are always learning intentionally or unintentionally but they may not always
be aware of the processes at play. By highlighting these strategies, we wanted students to gain a deeper
understanding of how they learn.

68

Community Moments: An Open Conversation

After analyzing the first round of interview data, I got chatting to a fellow graduate student. They really
dwell on practice, I told him. I want them to think about other aspects of learning. At the time,
however, I wasnt entirely sure what these other aspects might be. Why dont you talk to them about it?
he suggested.

The following class wide conversation might have done more to shape my own understanding of learning
than the students. My question was straightforward: If a person wanted to get better at soccer, how
would they do that? Stefanie was first to respond: They could do tricks, she proposed. While she may
have been envisioning an expert soccer player, not the learning process, her idea got me thinking about
how great learners push themselves to be better. After learning how to dribble, a players next step might
be to learn the Cruyff Turn. Next, James chimed in: They should get a coach who could help them. This
thought reflected the projects main aim, for students to support one anothers learning. Finally, Olivia
reiterated the most common theme: If they want to get better, they should practice a lot, she said.
While I couldnt disagree with this statement, we had discussed some new ideas along the way.



Directed Draw: Exploring Learning Strategies

To develop students thinking about helping, my teaching partner and I settled on a directed draw
activity. The challenge would be to draw a realistic frog. First, students would attempt the drawing in
their independent work spots without any guidance. After a few minutes, we would gather as a class to
discuss the difficulty of this assignment, and I would then prompt a student to ask me for support. (The
strength chart lists art as one of my personal strengths.) Playing the role of helper, I would lead a
directed draw, as students would attempt a second draft. We intentionally chose a difficult animal to
draw so that students might recognize the benefit of a helper. By following my directions, we hoped
students second drafts would be significantly better than the first. Throughout the activity, I would drop
hints about the four learning strategies. Then, at the conclusion of the activity, students would share
their two pictures and their learning process.

Since the lessons focus was on learning, not drawing skills, I introduced the exercise as a thinking
activity. As expected, students struggled to draw a realistic frog on their own. During this five minute
period, many students tried to ask each other for help, prompting me to remind them the first draft
should be completed alone. On a different day, it might have been interesting to let these conversations
continue. How might the drawings from these partnerships have differed from the directed drawings?
To focus every student on own learning process, however, we continued as planned, and I claimed the
role of helper myself. After the class had gathered on the rug with a new sheet of paper, I invited a
student to check the strengths board and ask me for help. There was a light-hearted moment of
dramatic play when Mikey arose from his spot and asked me in front of the class, Mr. Paul, can you
help us draw a frog? In the following weeks, I hoped to hear similar requests between students.

Over the next fifteen minutes, students attention skills were tested as I slowly took the class through
the drawing. Imploring students to use their smart brains, I used geometric terms, such as straight
lines and half-circles, to describe my drawing. In addition, I pushed students to do a little bit more by
adding a circular pad at the end of each toe. By the end of the directed draw, many students had frogs
that looked far more realistic than their first attempt. During our class discussion, five students were
69

selected to present their first and second drafts. How did you learn to do it so much better? I asked
each student. We followed directions, replied one student. We had another go, said another. We
asked you for help! exclaimed one enthusiastic artist. Reframing these ideas as the four strategies for
learning, I recorded our thinking on a flipchart. Now that we know more about learning, I said,
tomorrow, we will think about how to help others learn.

Figure 12: Directed Draw First and Second Drafts Samples: Students W and G




























How Do We Help?

By examining the learning process, my teaching partner and I had helped our students identify four key
learning strategies. While we hoped students would adopt all of these strategies, our action research
project centered on the first one: asking others for help. When one of our students expressed a need
for support, we would encourage the student to check the strengths chart, find a classmate with a
relevant strength, and then ask that person for help. But how would that person help? To build a
community centered around peer support, we also needed to equip students with the knowledge and
skills to help each other.
Stefanies First Draft Stefanies Second Draft
Dans Second Draft Dans First Draft
70

Helping Strategies

With this goal in mind, my teaching partner and I developed four helping strategies. While we hoped
to transform our first grade students into student teachers, we intentionally used the term helping
strategies and not teaching strategies. In school, the word teaching is associated with classroom
activities and adults. By selecting the word helping, we hoped students would feel more comfortable
adopting these strategies out on the playground and beyond the school walls. While this word carries its
own connotations of charity, of selflessness - we concluded that it was a less limiting. There are many
ways to help; teaching is just one of them.

The first two strategies, asking questions and showing someone how to do a little bit, came straight
from our experience as teachers. We framed the first strategy as a way for helpers to gain more specific
information about how to support their peer. If a student needed help drawing a picture, for instance,
they might begin by saying, What part of the picture can I help you with? Our second strategy,
showing how to do a little bit, was my kid-friendly translation for modeling. If a student needed help
making an origami creation, a helper might demonstrate the trickier steps using a separate piece of
paper and then prompt their peer to try on their own. Our third helping strategy mirrored our fourth
learning strategy: use resources materials and my smart brain. We wanted students to remind one
another that they could pull from their environment and exercise thinking techniques. If a student is
struggling with a math problem, the helper could provide blocks or use them to explain. If two students
on the playground are having trouble resolving a conflict, a helper might mediate using a problem-
solving protocol, such as STEP: state the problem, try out solutions, explore consequences, and pick a
solution (Committee for Children, n.d.). Our fourth and final strategy, celebrate and use encouraging
words, is an expression of positive reinforcement. We want to encourage students to reach out for help,
take new risks, and feel like their efforts are valued. Supportive words are acts of support. Taken
together, we hoped these four helping strategies would enable our first grade students to support
each others learning.

An Optical Illusion Experiment: Exploring Helping Strategies

As before, we wanted to provide students with an experience through which they could discover and
practice these four helping strategies. Inspired by an exercise from a teacher training video, we
designed an activity involving optical illusions. First, we would show the entire class an ambiguous
image, an optical illusion in which one may see two separate pictures. Then, using the four helping
strategies, we would help the students to see both pictures. After naming and recording these
strategies on a piece of flipchart paper, the students would have a chance to try them out. Students
would receive a new ambiguous image and help a partner to see the two pictures within. Ideally, the
helpers would guide their partners to perceive both pictures without simply telling them what to see.
Like masterful teachers, we wanted students to guide their peers to discovery, not simply deliver
content. To make sure the helping partner could see both images, my teaching partner and I would
divide the students into two groups, preview half of the images with our group, and briefly review the
helping strategies. Then, in turns, each student would try to help their partner decipher an ambiguous
image. To wrap up the activity, we would gather as a class and discuss the effectiveness of our helping
strategies.

71

An ambiguous image, which
may be viewed as a face or a
person playing the
saxophone.
This well-known ambiguous
image was a challenge for
many of the students in my
group.
Like the previous lesson, our focus was on helping, not optical illusions, so
I introduced the lesson as a thinking activity. To promote the strengths
chart, I told the students that my strength for this thinking activity was
sharp eyes and that I would help them develop sharper eyes as well.
Students were enthusiastic about the challenge of ambiguous images.
Before I could ask a question - the first helping strategy - students were
shouting out, I can see it! I can see it! What can you see? I asked. A
face, students sang in chorus. But I see a man with a horn, inserted a
different student. Pause. A teachable moment, or perhaps I should say a
help-able moment! Using hand signals, I was able to count the number of
students who saw a face, the number of students who saw the musician,
and the number of people who saw both. Then, using different colored
pens for each picture, I outlined and labeled identifying features, such as
the faces eyes, and the musicians head. Eventually, all but one student
could see both pictures. At this point, I offered some encouraging words:
You can do it, Jonny, I said. Let me show you a little bit more. After I
explained that the face was in shadow, he cocked his head to one side
and claimed that he could finally see it.

After summarizing the four helping strategies that I had modeled, we arranged the class into partners.
Each partner received a sticker that said I can help! As students entered this experience, we wanted to
remind them that everyone in our community could be a helper. Next, these partners temporarily split
up to review the images they would be presenting. To help their partner, they would first need to see
both pictures in the image. One group worked with me while the other group worked with my teaching
partner. While everyone in my group was able to see the two pictures in the first image, many students
were puzzled by the second one. This well-known image, which can be seen as an old womans face
looking to the side or a young womans face turning away, offered an additional opportunity to model
the helping strategies. I started with questions about what they saw and did not see. Then, focusing on
one picture at a time, I identified different parts, outlining the face and often imitating the characters
expression. Even for a teacher such as myself, it was hard to help every student in my group see both
pictures. Sensing their growing frustration, I decided to put this image aside. Out of the four images that
each pair would discuss, I would save this one for last. Upon my directions,
the two groups disbanded and reunited with their partner at their designated
work spots.

Now the students would have a turn to play the role of helper. We handed
out copies of the first image reviewed by my teaching partners group, and
the students who worked with her leapt into action. Circulating around the
room, I heard many question: Do you see these chess pieces? Do you see
tall people in this picture? Most of the helpers were pointing emphatically
to different parts of the picture, as they tried to explain the different images.
Look at the white, now look at the black, directed one student. After a
couple of minutes, we asked the students to stop and share how the helpers
had assisted their partner in seeing the image. Several students spoke the
second helping strategy, Show how to do a little bit. They would point out
different parts of each picture, often using a pencil. Next, we distributed a
new image that the other partner could help with. Again, I noticed similar
72

kinds of questions and hints. In our original plan, we hoped that students would be able to offer
assistance without telling their partners exactly what they were looking at. During this particular
experiment, however, this goal proved a little too ambitious. Helpers often began by describing the two
pictures, and then their partners response would shape rest of the conversation. Nevertheless, it was
encouraging to hear the ongoing occurrence of aha moments, as students exclaimed I see it! or
Now I get it! Even if students were not following the helping strategies explicitly, the spirit of support
was present in these moments of discovery. Pressed for time, we were only able to get through two
images before gathering as a class on the rug. As we reviewed the helping strategies, students shared
examples of each one from their work with the ambiguous images. As we moved forward with our
project, I hoped this experience had built a foundation for future peer support interactions.

To Help or Not to Help?

With a growing understanding of learning and helping, students were ready to think more deeply about
peer support during first grade activities. During an early meeting with colleagues, a fellow teacher
raised an important point: I love how you are encouraging students to help one another, she began,
but I wonder about the times when its not appropriate to help. This comment pushed my thinking.
Although we wanted students to help each other, we did not want a classroom where students
badgered others with offers of support or spent more time on someone elses work than their own. As
always, we wanted to give students the space and time to work through problems on their own first,
and then reach out for support if necessary. Ultimately, we wanted students to have a clear
understanding of appropriate and inappropriate times for helping others. To this end, we established
six guidelines:

Its okay to help when . . .
1. Others ask me for help.
2. Ive been working hard.

Helping isnt such a great idea when . . . .
3. Somebody else is already helping.
4. Its getting in the way of my own learning.
5. Kids are supposed to be working alone.
6. Youre just doing something for someone else.

As I introduced each guideline to the class, I made sure to explain my rationale. Firstly, I stressed that
these statements were guidelines, not rules. Students did not have to follow them strictly; rather, the
guidelines could help them figure out whether it was a more or less appropriate time to help others.
Reflecting counter-examples to the guidelines, Im sure there are situations where off-task students
have successfully stepped in to help another. Furthermore, I can think of several situations where two or
more helpers can be of use. While my sentence starters aimed to capture this flexibility, I also hoped to
avoid ambiguity by setting straightforward guidelines.

The first set of guidelines focused on appropriate times for helping. To empower students in need, we
stated that, in general, helpers should offer support only when asked. Without this guideline, we
worried that students might wander around the classroom, senselessly offering their support to any
classmate in sight. Even worse, we worried that helpers might target lower-performing students when
they did not need help, a dynamic that could damage these students self-image. Our second guideline
73

stated that, before jumping in to help others, helpers should be focused on their own work. Like before,
we worried that students might avoid their own work by seeking out requests for help; we wanted
instances of peer support to punctuate the flow of the work sessions, not become the focus.

The second set of guidelines indicated less appropriate times for helping. In our classroom we
recommended that peer support involve just two individuals, the student seeking help and the helper.
Too many cooks spoil the broth, as the old saying goes, and we did not want students to be
overwhelmed by a huddle of helpers. Reflecting on the needs of helpers, our next guideline addressed
the length of peer support interactions. Although we would not set a firm time limit, we did not want
students to spend so much time helping other students that they neglected their own learning goals;
they would still be responsible for their own work and to any group members. With our fifth guideline,
we reminded students of the importance of independent work time. We explained that during certain
activities, such as Read to Self, students could learn more if they completed tasks and puzzled through
problems on their own. The final guideline fit less neatly with the others, as it specified an inappropriate
helping strategy rather than an inappropriate time for helping. If students just do something for
someone else, I explained, theyre not really helping that person get better at it; learners need to try
things for themselves. During our activity about helping strategies, I had failed to stress this all-
important caveat, so I chose to include it as a guideline.

An Interactive Presentation: Modeling the Guidelines

To teach these guidelines, I created a PowerPoint presentation featuring pictures of students from our
class. The day before this lesson, I invited four students to take part in a photo shoot. In different spots
around the classroom, we simulated six helping situations, one to represent each guideline. Our first
picture showed an asker approaching a helper," communicating our first guideline that students in
need are expected to reach out for support. The next picture depicted another helper trying to force
her way into this exchange, highlighting our third guideline that advises against additional helpers.
During the photo shoot, I planned to rotate the role of helper and student in need, as I wished to
communicate that everyone in our community could play both. This approach proved to be particularly
relevant, as the group of participating students presented a wide range of strengths and skill levels. By
depicting lower-performing students in the role of helper and higher-performing students in the role
of asker, we wanted to strike down any preconceptions about individual students capacity to help.

The goal of the presentation was to help students interpret the guidelines for helping within the context
of our first-grade class. After explaining each guideline for helping, I told the class that we would play a
game to see if we really understood them. I would show them each picture, read aloud any text I had
added to the pictures, and offer a few seconds of think time. Then, students would use hand signals to
show whether they thought it was an appropriate or inappropriate time to help by making a check or x
sign, respectively. Before revealing the answer, we asked students to explain their thinking and work
towards a common understanding of the situation. Then, a large check mark or x would appear to
confirm whether or not the situation was an appropriate time for helping.






74

Figure 13: PowerPoint Slides from To Help or Not To help Presentation
Guideline #2: Its okay to help if Ive been working hard.

Students seemed excited to see their classmates on screen as well as enjoy the guessing game aspect of
this presentation. Surveying the class, most students were able to immediately identify whether or not
each situation was an appropriate time for helping. After these students had explained their thinking,
most if not all remaining students were persuaded to change their signal. I noticed that all four
students who appeared in the presentation were particularly engaged and consistently signalled the
correct answers. This observation supports the axiom that higher levels of involvement lead to higher
levels of engagement. While most students seemed to grasp the meaning of these guidelines in our
classroom context, only time would tell if they would put them into practice.

These guidelines were my first attempt to structure peer support interactions in our first-grade
classroom. Looking back, I wonder how I might have incorporated student voice into the drafting
process. Considering their developmental level and limited experience, I feared that a class-wide norm-
setting process might create more confusion than clarity about appropriate times for helping. That said,
I might have worked with a small group of students or led a class-wide brainstorming session before
making my own final revisions. Reflecting on the balance of these guidelines, I also wondered if I might
be discouraging peer support interactions. By specifying four guidelines for inappropriate times,
compared with just two guidelines for appropriate times to help, I worried students might err on the
side of caution and back out of legitimate helping situations. In a second draft, I would aim to reframe
the guidelines in a more positive, encouraging tone.

Role Plays

Thus far, students had examined how people learn, how people can help others learning, and guidelines
for helping. Finally, to provide models of what real peer interactions might look and sound like in first
grade, we prepared a series of role plays. Spectating students would be asked to analyze these scenes
for examples of helping strategies and contribute more ideas for support. While the scenes would only
require a total of six actors, two for each scene, we hoped these students would experience invaluable
practice in structured peer support interactions. The scenes would offer a range of scenarios. One
student would need help tying shoes, another reading a tricky word, and another drawing a picture. To
make the role plays as realistic as possible, I selected actors with strengths in tying shoes, reading, and
art, according to the strengths chart. I also made sure the first students to perform were confident and
enthusiastic actors. We wanted to begin with a strong performance that future student actors could use
as a reference point.
75

Role Play Dialogue: Drawing a Car

Student A: Im trying to draw a car, but its
hard for me. Can you help?
Cristina: Sure. I cant spend too long, but I
can help you get started.
Student A: Thanks!
Cristina: What have you done so far?
Student A: I started with the steering wheel,
but then the rest of the car didnt look right.
Cristina: Okay, good try. Heres my idea:
start with the outline of the whole car. Let
me show you on a piece of paper; then you
can try on your own. Copy what I do and
then you can do the rest. First, draw the
wheels. Then, draw the outline. After that,
you can put in the other details, like the
steering wheel, door handles, and the
people inside. You can do that bit on your
own. Did that help?
Student A: Yeah, thats great. Thanks!
Cristina: Youre welcome. I cant wait to see
how it turns out!

To prepare, I invited each pair of students to a separate
space, where we reviewed the scenes premise and
rehearsed. Each scene would follow the same sequence.
A student would struggle with a task, use the strengths
chart to find someone confident in that area, and then
ask that Stephanor help. The helper would then use
three or four helping strategies to support the student in
need. While I had a rough outline for the specifics of
each scene, I encouraged students to use their own
language and ad lib as necessary. After running through
the scene two or three times, we would present the
role-play to the class. As facilitator, I would have a
remote control enabling me to pause, rewind, or fast
forward the action. At the end of the performance, we
would ask spectating students to reflect on the four
helping strategies and share what they noticed.

The performances were a mixed bag. Some students
were convincing in their roles while other forgot their
next line or struggled to project their voices audibly. At
this point, I would often pause the action and swoop in
with a suggestion to kickstart the scene. The audiences
attention also fluctuated. After displaying a lack of focus
during the first role play, we discussed audience etiquette before the second performance and noticed a
significant improvement. On several occasions, audience members on the edge of the rug started
shuffling closer to the actors to get a better view of the scene. While we appreciated their eagerness, we
had to remind spectators that approaching actors might distract them and block the others views.
Ultimately, these behavioral redirections disrupted the flow of the role-plays. After each role play, which
concluded with a round of applause, students discussed what had happened. While the class was able to
identify most of the helping strategies in each role play, the ideas often came from the same group of
students. These seven students, mostly girls, are the most regular participants in open, class-wide
conversations, and the same was true for this activity. To bring more students into the discussion, I
might have incorporated partner conversations or used our popsicle stick system, a common equity-
based method for hearing the voices of all students.












Apple and Ulrich participate in a role-play about helping others draw pictures.
76

A visual aid displaying examples of
questions students might ask each
other to support anothers
learning.
Visual Aids: Capturing the Language of Helping

To capture the language used in these role plays, we created visual aids that might provide guide future
peer support interactions. Students were divided into four groups, each of which was assigned a
particular helping strategy. Drawing from the role plays and their own experience, each student was
responsible for thinking of an example of their assigned strategy. Here are three examples that students
generated in the Ask Questions group:

1. What part of your art do you need help with?
2. What kind of exercise moves do you need help with?
3. Do you need help shooting the ball in basketball?

While the first example seems to connect with the role play about
drawing pictures, the second two seem to be inspired by other
experiences. Although many students did not draw upon the role
plays, their examples were reasonable applications of each
strategy.

Reflecting on the activity, some groups found their assignment
more challenging than others. The students focusing on our fourth
strategy (celebrate and use encouraging words) were able to
quickly generate many examples. With support, the group
responsible for our third strategy (use resources materials and your smart brain) could also identify
examples from their experience. The remaining strategy (show how to do a little bit), however, proved
to be a little trickier. Even with ample prompting, students in this group struggled to imagine scenarios
where our second strategy could be applied. Ultimately, for the members of this group, it seemed that
the substance of the role-plays had not stuck.

With our guidance, every student was eventually able to offer an example of what they might say as a
helper. Compiling these quotes, I created visual aids reminding students how to put the four helping
strategies into practice. Now, it was up to students to support one another during regular classroom
activities.