How can I help students feel more confident in their ability to explain their answers?

I have been asking myself this question for the past two months and although there is no
clear-cut answer, there are ways that I can help guide students towards this goal. My ideal
classroom has students giving their educated opinion, only to be countered by a classmate who
has another valid but different opinion, and for the following discussion to be based in reason,
where students can counter each others ideas or strengthen what they have already said. This is
quickly becoming an important part of elementary education as the Common Core standards
have put a large emphasis on informational texts, for the first time, elementary-school students
who today mostly learn writing by constructing personal narratives, memoirs, and small works
of fiction will be required to write informative and persuasive essays (Tyre, 2012). Students
are being asked to do more critical thinking than they ever have before. It is not as necessary to
give factual evidence to back up a story based on events that a student is retelling. However,
when discussing whether or not humans have an exoskeleton, a factual basis and textual press are
necessary to find the answer. In my classroom, some students just guess when asked this
question and when they are asked how they know, a common answer is for them say that they do
not know or that they just know it. I have even heard students recently say that they guessed
even though I have seen them write down or point out in the text why.
During my lessons, I attempted to have students work on this aspect of their student
experience. I wanted them to be able to express their answers, but also be able to respond to
someone questioning the reasons behind their response. In my math lesson, students worked in
partners to solve both number sentences and word problems using the commutative property,
which led some of them to be more successful in describing their thoughts. Similarly in my
literacy lesson, I had students do individual graphic organizer work first, and then they worked in
partners. This helped the students realize if they had the correct understanding after doing
thinking on their own, and I actually observed two students change their minds after their turn
and talk. In the science lesson, students worked in groups of five or six but were still expected to
do a group share. After all of these group or partner shares, all the students came back to the
entire group and we had a full group or class discussion, in which I expected students answers to
be stronger, and if I had a follow-up question I believed that it would reveal deeper
understanding from the students. It is also important to note that I would expect student writing
to improve after the whole class discussion as well, which is incredibly important to student
achievement, consistently, one of the largest differences between failing and successful students
was that only the latter could express their thoughts on the page (Tyre, 2012). I know that some
students would have more success in sharing their answers verbally while others may be stronger
voicing their ideas writing.
I felt that the student discussions that were held in all of my lessons were only marginally
better than the ones that my students have been having all year. For math, I was only able to
really get one student, out of four, to start interacting the way that I wanted. The other students
either did not express their understanding to the whole group or only offered a brief glimpse into
what they were thinking about. This could have been partially due to the fact that the interest
level in the math lesson was below average. I want to create a math environment that provides
spaces and relationships where ethnically diverse students feel recognized, respected, valued,
seen, and heard (Gay, 2010, 51), and this can began to be accomplished through place-based
learning. Whereas, the lesson I actually taught failed to achieve this. In the literacy lesson, I
observed strong changes in student confidence, however, the actual skill being worked on was

lacking. Students were confident in what they were saying because they did not fully understand
the concept (inferences) so from their understanding they were able to feel confident. This was
my fault, as I did a poor job scaffolding in the necessary background information and to make a
strong connection for the students between my intro and the body of the lesson. However, I was
happy with how these students had seemed to move towards feeling more confident and the
ability to explain their thinking. The science lesson was successful in helping students learn the
content and explain it in their own words. However, according to the students graphic
organizers it was unclear if they could write about what they had just discussed. I also felt that
some parts of the science were a little too regulatory, and I do not want students to feel as if the
teacher is using a directive, controlling pedagogy (Haberman, 2003, 242). I believe I could
have avoided that by doing a little bit more instructing in the introduction and then letting
students explore more during the body of the lesson.
Some of the issues relating to my question that I am struggling to answer, are that my
classroom mentor is on top of creating relationships with the students and is extremely authentic,
when students sense that they have really got to know their teacher, that their teacher allows
herself to be known, the relationship becomes real (Rodgers & Raider-Roth, 2006, 278), yet
students still feel almost afraid. I actually had one student the other day tell me that he really
liked being in my classroom mentors class but that he was still a little scared of her. This may
be working against my teacher because presence may live but it cannot thrive in a hostile
environment (Rodgers & Raider-Roth, 2006, 283). I think as the year moves forward that fear
will subside even more but this student is one that definitely needs to feel comfortable and
confident if he is going to be attempting to work on his dislike of reading and writing. Another
aspect that could be influencing the students is connected to the pedagogy of poverty and how
students actually have an investment in continuing it, the students stake in maintaining the
pedagogy of poverty is of the strongest possible kind: it absolved them or responsibility for
learning and puts the burden on the teachers, who must be accountable for making them learn
(Haberman, 2003, 245). My classroom mentor does not come from the pedagogy of poverty
background and allows for an incredible amount of student autonomy, however I am not sure
how the students teachers from years past acted. I do know that many of the teachers in the
grades below fourth grade, are not as open to the idea that students can learn without a teacher
yelling or teaching the material to them. The students may have to switch from the old
mindset when they were being taught in the pedagogy of poverty to the inquiry stance. I cannot
expect one lesson or one week of lessons to completely change students. Even when students do
start to get comfortable with taking control of their learning and understanding, I am sure that it
will occur at different times for all of them.
I think that adding a component about students questioning where information comes
from can further my question. I do want students to use the evidence they have to further their
understanding and explanations but I do not want them to completely believe something just
because they read it. In our current world, fake news is holding many back from understanding
either both sides of an issue or just truly what the issues are. I want my students to look at an
article pull out the pertinent information, but also question where the information is coming
from: allowing for the active assertion of student interest and curiosity(Gay, 2010, 52). Just as
I am following an inquiry stance in my teaching, I want students to develop the same thinking
skills that I am using, creating habits of inquiry, a sense of criticalness, and a moral edit among
students to care for self and others (Gay, 2010, 52). In my literacy lesson, the article the
students had to read was about the super moon, and at the beginning the article suggests that the

super moon is believed to be harmful by some, but as it continues it debunks this myth. The
issue is that my students immediately jumped to the conclusion that the super moon was
dangerous to Earth, and one student even wrote that it was going to cause World War III. While I
do not want to discourage students from using their imagination, there is a time and place for
everything. This jump to WWIII was partially my fault, as in the way that the graphic organizer
was set up and because the idea of inferring was not as clear as it could be, but in reality it is not
logical to go from reading the article to the super moon causing WWIII. The partner turn and
talk combined with questioning helped this student realize that they had made an incorrect
inference, which recognizing that one has made an mistake is an important skill as well.
Looking towards next semester and my future teaching, I want to keep in mind that I may
be working against much of students educational careers up to the point when they come into
my classroom. We may have to work towards building a relationship, even if I do not think that I
am being scary, there may be some who are afraid of me. I also know that from the first day
some students will be able to explain their answers perfectly but others will not. This does not
mean that it is not an important skill, but that each student will have different strengths and
weaknesses, so it is valuable to add multiple components to lessons to allow all students to feel
successful. I will be basing a lot of my ideas and lessons on what I actually see in my students
and not my preconceived notions, the caring teaching-learning relationship requires a feedback
loop, where teachers can take action, can watch how students respond and can be moved and
changed by these responses, thereby shaping their next caring act (Rodgers & Raider-Roth,
2006, 276). Teacher observations will be integral to my understanding of my classroom, my
students, and my own teaching ability. I will be forced to change some of the ideas that I may
feel are the way that the classroom works. I know that I will go in with the most open of a mind
that I can with the knowledge that I will learn more from these students than they will ever learn
from me.
Works Cited
Gay, G. (2010). The power of culturally responsive teaching. Theory, Research, Practice. New
York, New York: Teachers College.
Rodgers, Carol R., Raider-Roth, Miriam B. (2006). Presence in teaching. Teachers and
Teaching: theory and practice. Vol. 12, No. 3, (pp. 265-287).
Haberman, Martin. (2003). Chapter 18: The pedagogy of poverty versus good teaching in The
Jossey-Bass Reader on Teaching: San Francisco, California. (pp. 239-250).
Tyre, Peg. (2012). The writing revolution. The Atlantic.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/the-writing-revolution/309090/