A Spotlight on: Communities of Thinking in the Branco Weiss Beit Shemesh School

After studying Judges, chapters 13-16 - the story of Samson - the eighth-graders of the Branco Weiss Beit Shemesh school went on a field trip to the area of Tzor'a and Eshtaol, a short 15 minutes drive from their school and where the events described in the story of Samson took place. They went there to celebrate the culmination of a year long study in the framework of COMMUNITIES OF THINKING final understanding performances. Each community of thinking prepared a presentation on a topic related to the chapters learned in the Bible.

Tzor'a and Eshtaol

The concept of communities of thinking was developed in the Branco Weiss Institute and has been applied in the Beit Shemesh school for the past 12 years. The pedagogy of communities of thinking draws on several approaches of high-order learning: pedagogy based on questions, inquiry-based learning, individual and joint learning, dialogical teaching, peer teaching, feedback that leads to learning, and the concept of the teacher as mentor and expert leader of his pupils.

The pupils participate in the learning experience not as passive spectators, but as active partners in inquiry, in a graduated learning process. Incorporating the idea of multiple intelligences into the learning process, enables each pupil to choose an area of interest as his/her learning method. Pupils can choose studies with an emphasis on music, drama, art, science, nature and the environment, and so forth. The combination of these two approaches - the thinking community and multiple intelligences - provides pupils with a deep, significant learning experience that speaks to them personally.

The pupils visited the supposed "gravesites" of Samson and his father Manoah, who, as they learned in the book of Judges this year, were buried "between Tzor'a and Eshtaol." They also visited the Sculpture Path that traverses the Tzor'a Forest, where there are sculptures depicting the story of Samson's valor.

The field trip started in Tel Tzor'a and the Sculpture Path in the Hanassi Forest, where the sculptures of the mighty Samson and Delilah the Philistine, the woman who sealed Samson's fate, are erected.

The "observation terrace" in the Danny Raviv Site at Nahal Sorek was used as a stage for performances and activities based on the different types of intelligence: Grades 8B and 8J did their presentation first on Samson's wedding feast. Based on his riddle, "Out of the eater came something to eat, out of the strong came something sweet," the pupils tasted foods made with honey.

Grade 8G, which specializes in music, included several pupils with darboukas who rhythmically drummed the story of Samson. Grades 8E and 8I, which specialize in theater, dramatized scenes of Delilah's attempts to persuade Samson to reveal the secret of his strength. Grade 8A, which specializes in sports and movement, performed a dance about Delilah's efforts at persuasion. Grade 8H, which specializes in the environment, conducted an observation of Nahal Sorek, Samson's area of activity where he fled from the Philistines. The pupils in Grade 8F, which specializes in art, made Philistine jugs based on theoretical and technical explanations about Philistine art that they received from their classmates. Then all pupils then went down a steep hill towards Kibbutz Tzor'a, after which the theater class, Grade 8E, acted out Samson's funeral, based on the pupils' imagination.

The Pedagogy of Communities of Thinking

Learning in the thinking community addresses big questions, profound insights, and important controversies that underpin the subject being studied. At every stage of the learning the links to local, national, and global social issues are emphasized. The organization of the curriculum enables pupils to delve into a limited number of topics and questions simultaneously.

Teaching and learning in a community of thinking are based on three stages: the fertile question, inquiry, and the concluding exercise.

In the first stage, the fertile question is presented to the class (the thinking community) by the teacher. It should be an open question, the answer to which is not clear-cut, but complex and relative. The fertile question undermines the pupils' or society's ideas on a given issue, and alerts the learners to basic concepts and processes in the relevant discipline. The question should also be connected to the pupils' world, and feature emotional, ethical, and existential dimensions.

In the second stage, the stage of inquiry, the pupils split into small groups that investigate different aspects of the fertile question. The inquiry focuses on a research question the pupils think up that is connected to the fertile question.

After the inquiry and the learning the pupils present what they learned on the subject and the process they underwent in the concluding exercise (final presentation). The exercise encourages the pupils to do something with the knowledge they have acquired-to "play" with it, to use it-to create, analyze, assemble, to apply it in new situations, to reinterpret it, and to present it to others. The active use of the knowledge consists not only in discovering its theoretical, academic understanding of it, but also in constructing that understanding. The concluding exercise is both team- and community-based. The research groups give different presentations that build and reveal the insights they have attained in the presence of their community (their classmates, schoolmates, or a community event in the school). Because the concluding exercise can be conducted in various creative ways and through diverse work methods the inquiry itself can be conducted in a variety of ways, thereby giving expression to pupils with heterogeneous abilities.

Teaching and learning in thinking communities necessarily brings about a change in the teachers' work and status. The work in thinking communities intensifies the teacher's presence in the classroom. Teachers say it allows them to get to know the pupils in a deeper way. The teachers are not transmitters of knowledge but brokers who guide the various lines of inquiry the pupils choose. Teachers in thinking communities must display creativity, adaptability, and improvisational ability. "The lesson is not always predictable; the challenge and the surprise it presents are moving and rewarding."

The work in thinking communities also furthers a discourse among the teachers themselves, since it is difficult to prepare and encompass a community alone. The teachers point out the meaningful nature of team teaching: "Teaching in a thinking community is no simple matter, but when we see how the pupils display talents and abilities that do not find expression through regular teaching methods, it is exhilarating."

The concept of communities of thinking has been a fundamental tenet of the Beit Shemesh Branco Weiss school since its inception in 1997. Over the years the teaching method has been honed and refined, especially in the junior high school, but the principles of the community of thinking have remained the same. Teachers attest to the fact that work in thinking communities helps develop greater cognitive skills, such as the ability to investigate, to ask questions in general and high-level questions in particular, and to fuse texts and other sources of information. Pupils who chose the alternative matriculation option said that it was easier for them than for those who had not experienced inquiry in learning communities.

In every grade level in the school there is a thinking community in a different field of knowledge. In seventh grade there is a literary community; in eighth grade the community is in Bible; in ninth grade the community is in history, and in tenth grade there is again a literary community. In the eleventh grade the community is in English.

Read an article on Communities of Thinking in Educational Leadership 58 (3)(November 2000): 23-45.

Contact a Branco Weiss teacher of Communities of Thinking

Watch a short video of a community of thinking (coming soon)