4.12 Widening the Horizons of Our Thinking

CONNECTION Think about a frustrating, unhelpful conversation. I don’t mean useless—I mean one where the exchange between two people didn’t go anywhere. Imagine you are back in that conversation. Show me how you look. What does your body language look like? Look around at each other! Does this look like it leads to success? Sometimes we forget that the reason to have a conversation is to be changed by it. We need to be ready and willing to listen.

TEACHING POINT Today I want to teach you that we learn by reading, thinking, AND talking. We have to be willing to be changed by our conversations.

TEACHING Read about UP before it came out. Knew it was about Mr. Muntz living alone and facing the risk of losing his house before attaching balloons to his house and flying away. I thought the plot was “a man solves his problems by going on a great adventure.”

TEACHING Read about UP before it came out. Knew it was about Mr. Muntz living alone and facing the risk of losing his house before attaching balloons to his house and flying away. I thought the plot was “a man solves his problems by going on a great adventure.” Then I saw the movie and thought “Up is about a man learning to escape his sadness.”

TEACHING Read about UP before it came out. Knew it was about Mr. Muntz living alone and facing the risk of losing his house before attaching balloons to his house and flying away. I thought the plot was “a man solves his problems by going on a great adventure.” Then I saw the movie and thought “Up is about a man learning to escape his sadness.” But my sister said she didn’t agree. At first I didn’t want to listen to her because I wanted to be right! But she explained her thinking and I started to see that she had a point. I was able to merge our thinking to come to a new, stronger theme. “Up is about a man learning to escape his sadness by opening up his hard to care about someone else again.”

TEACHING It can be easy to hold onto an old idea, especially if we’re proud of it. But we can learn so much more and come up with stronger ideas if we open ourselves up to learning from our conversations. None of my ideas were WRONG. They just weren’t the BEST. I was missing out on better, stronger thinking.

ACTIVE ENGAGEMENT Watch video clip What was something that you learned or that surprised you? Share with your group.

LINK You entered today with an idea that was important to you and are now ready to add to that idea, make a new idea, or change your idea.  When we read, read the way you've been listening, really listening to the text and also seeing the way the text relates to your idea.

MIDWORKSHOP How much have you read today? You've been reading for about 15 minutes so you should be about through 12 pages. If you haven't read that much, you need to pick up the pace. You will have about 20 minutes now, so put a post-it note or book mark at your goal spot and see if you can get up to speed.

SHARE Write about how your idea is changing. Thought Prompts for Generating Quick Writes I used to think...now I realize When I first read this, I thought...but now, rereading it, I realize... On the surface, the story of...but when you look deeper, it's really about... Some people think this story is about...But I think it's really a story about... My ideas about...are complicated. In a way, I think...but on the other hand, I also think...