Questioning Strategies

April 6, 2016May 9, 2016

126: Taxonomy of Thinking

Chapter 6 in Winebrenner, Susan, and Pamela Espeland. Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom: Strategies and Techniques Every Teacher Can Use to Meet the Academic Needs of the Gifted and Talented. Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit Pub., 2001. Print.

Knowledge
- recall, remember
- Trigger words: tell, recite, list, remember, memorize, define
- Products: worksheets, quizzes, tests, skills work, vocabulary work, facts in isolation
Comprehension
- restate concepts in own words
- Trigger words: restate in own words, give examples, explain, summarize, translate, summarize, translate
- Products: drawings, diagrams, responses to questions, revisions, translations
Application
- transfer knowledge from one context to the next
- Trigger words: demonstrate, use guides, maps, charts, etc., build, cook
- Products: recipe, model, artwork, demonstration, craft
Analysis
- understand how parts relate to a whole
- trouble shoot
- understand structure and motive
- Trigger words: investigate, classify, categorize, compare, contrast, solve
- Products: survey, questionnaire, plan, solution to problem report, prospects
Evaluation
- judge value of something using criteria
- support judgement
- Trigger words: judge, evaluate, give opinion, give viewpoint, prioritize, recommend, critique
- Products: decision, rating/grades, editorial, debate, critique, defense, verdict, judgement
Synthesis
- reform individual parts to make a new whole
- Trigger words: compose, design, invent, create, hypothesize, construct, forecast, rearrange, imagine
- Products: lesson plan, song, poem, story, advertisement, invention, other creative products

The Bloom’s taxonomy levels can be used to create questions and activities at different levels of thinking. The varied products can be used develop menus of products that match the same learning targets to differentiate instruction. The top 3 levels can serve as extension activities for gifted students.

Preparation Steps

Analyze standards and write aligned long term and supporting learning targets
Determine which cognitive levels match a range of thinking that is appropriate to the learning targets
Use range of cognitive levels to design different options for scaffolding learning targets that can be used to differentiate instruction and offer student choice
Use trigger words to design good questions sequences that explore range of cognitive levels for each learning target

Early Implementation Steps

Initiate discussions that involve ALL students using questions sequences designed by using learning targets and thinking trigger words. See this article for ideas on how to increase student participation.

Advanced Implementation Steps

Teach students Thinking Levels and associated trigger words and products. Use this as a tool for students to ask better questions and to create alternative product choices for project.
Incorporate thinking level activities and learning targets into scaffolding that uses differentiated curriculum charts to offer students choices on how to learn and demonstrate mastery of learning targets

April 4, 2016May 9, 2016

125: Asking More Engaging Questions

Chapter 6 in Walsh, Jackie A., and Beth d. Sattes. Quality Questioning: Research-based Practice to Engage Every Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2005. Print.

Taxonomy of Personal Engagement:

Interest – student appears to be attentive, may like the subject
Engaging – student actively participates in learning tasks
Committing – students are actively involved/engaged in material, find it hard to move on to other topics
Internalizing – student “gets it”, sees connections between learning and other experiences
Interpreting – student wants to talk about implications and opinions related to learning
Evaluating – student “owns” the knowledge, may ask questions to check their understandings

Using Taxonomy of Personal Engagement to Design Questions:

Interest – What questions will I ask to attract students’ attention?
Engaging – What questions will I ask to get students more actively involved in discussion? that signal that I value their ideas?
Committing – What questions will I ask that will get students to take on responsibility for line(s) of inquiry?
Internalizing – What questions will I ask that will get students to relate their prior experiences, their feelings and opinions to targeted content material?
Interpreting – What questions will I ask that will invite them to express their understanding of their own worlds in relationship to the world of the subject matter? What opportunities will students to ask questions about their new understandings?
Evaluating – What questions will I ask that will let students try our their new thinking in new media?

The taxonomy of personal engagement creates and visualizes a road map for different types of affective responses toward new learnings. The taxonomy of personal engagement can help teachers consider what affective response they would like students to have with material and to design questions to stimulate these responses. Using this taxonomy can help teachers design students that get students more engaged in learning and that stimulate students to ask more questions.

Preparation Steps

Analyze standards and develop aligned learning targets.
Decide which levels of personal engagement are desired for each learning target.
Design questions aligned to learning targets and selected levels of personal engagement.

Early Implementation Steps

Ask students questions designed for different learning targets and for different levels of personal engagement.
Observe students’ responses to see if the questions are stimulating the expected levels of engagement. Use observations to fine tune questions strategies.

Advanced Implementation Steps

Ask students what types of questions stimulate different levels of personal engagement. Ask for characteristics and examples. Use this feedback to design better questions.
Give students topics and ask them to design questions at various levels of cognitive engagement. Use these questions to facilitate discussions.

April 4, 2016April 5, 2016

124: Teaching Students To Generate Questions

Chapter 6 in Walsh, Jackie A., and Beth d. Sattes. Quality Questioning: Research-based Practice to Engage Every Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2005. Print.

Reasons Why Students Struggle to Generate & Share Own Questions:

Relationship between perceived (and actual) academic ability & question asking
- the more students need help, the more reluctant they are to ask for it
- the more competent students are, the more likely they are to ask for help when needed
- the lower the achievement scores, the less likely the student is to ask questions
Relationship between students’ grade level in school & question asking
- as students advance in their careers, the trends above get worse or better creating a wider and wider achievement gap in asking questions
- low achieving students ask even less questions
- high achievement students learn to ask better questions and direct them to the right people
Relationship between student value on asking question & question asking
- when students like asking questions and find them helpful to learning, they tend to ask questions
Relationship between teacher relatedness with student & question asking
- teachers ask more questions of those they feel more connected to

Strategies to Meet Challenges of Question Asking

Create safe environment that values & leverages mistakes
Engage students in question: Do the benefits of asking questions outweigh the costs?
Provide instruction on how to ask questions
Use cooperative learning strategies to encourage students to ask for help from peers
Structure classroom to value intrinsic motivation & rewards over extrinsic motivate & rewards
Develop good caring relationships with all students

Elements of Effective Instruction in Question Generation:

Provide procedural prompts specific to strategy being taught.
- Examples: question stems, signal words.
Provide models of appropriate responses.
- Model how to use question stems and how to give appropriate responses to questions.
Anticipate potential difficulties.
- Use prior knowledge of students to predict potential pitfalls and constructive responses to these.
Regulate difficulty of material.
- Start formulating question from short passages and then lengthen passages and deepen their complexity over time.
Provide a cue card.
- Use cue cards or cue posters that relate to questioning framework in use – e.g. Bloom taxonomy.
Guide student practice.
- Practice in multiple modes: with teacher, reciprocal teaching, in small groups.
Provide feedback and corrections.
- Give opportunities for teacher and peer feedback structure by feedback protocols such as Critical Friends.
Provide and teach a checklist.
- Teacher age-appropriate checklist that describes good questions.
Assess student mastery.
- Set aside multiple practice opportunities described over time for students to develop the skill of formulating good questions. Assess their ability to formulate good questions and provide more practice opportunities and feedback as needed.

Stages to Teach Students for Designing Questions:

Planning phase – students experience things and ask questions
Implementation phase – student pursue and refine questions
Assessing phase – students assess effectiveness of questions

Student Question-Generation Formats

Reciprocal Teaching
- What – Students and teachers use dialogue to draw meaning from text
- Why – Improve comprehension & metacognition
- How – Teacher selects a text selection and assigns to students to read. Student summarize what they have read and generate questions about the text. Teacher assigns one student to role play as teacher and ask students questions about the text. Teacher asks as a coach who helps students ask good questions. Students not playing the teacher are encouraged to answer questions and ask clarifying questions.
Pair Problem Solving
- What – Students solve problems while interviewing each other in pairs
- Why – Promote metacognition and analytical thinking
- How – Students assigned problems and paired up. One person in pair solves problem by thinking aloud. Partner records approach, asks clarifying questions to learn specific of problem solving steps and does NOT intervene if he or she perceived errors in thinking. Partners take turns being in the think aloud and listening roles.
Metacognitive Anchoring
- What – Students ask metacognitive questions of themselves while reading texts
- Why – Improve comprehension & metacognition
- How – Student ask themselves questions while reading a text and write in their responses in margins or on sticky notes. After reading and annotating the text, students can transfer their response to a metacognition chart which these columns: Type of Questions I asked during Reading, Type of Thinking in Questions, Why I asked that Questions. Questions include:
  - What does this remind me of?
  - Why dd this happen?
  - What evidence supports this?
  - Is this ethical? How can I evaluate this?
  - Is write trying to persuade me? Do I believe this?
  - What point of view is guiding the reading?
Role-play Questioning
- What – Students ask questions about a problem while role playing as investigators of a problem.
- Why – Promote engagement & higher-level thinking
- How – Students are organized in teams with one recorder. Teacher poses a potential problem. Students posing as investigators of problem ask questions about the problem. They may brainstorm some answers related to questions. Then ask more questions related to this brainstorming. After question sessions, teams meet to compare questions and decide which might be the most effective questions to investigate to solve the problem.
Press Conference
- What – Students ask questions of a visiting expert.
- Why – Stimulate curiosity & practice active listening
- How – Students work in pairs to brainstorm questions in advance. Pairs compile a master class list. Students prioritize and categorize questions. Students select a reasonable number of related questions to ask visiting expert.
Textbook Question Analysis
- What – Students analyze textbook questions to determine their cognitive values and assign them values
- Why – Promote analysis & review content
- How – Teach students first about the different cognitive levels of questions and their purposes. Students record textbook questions in a question form that has students determine the cognitive level of question, consequence of question (what would student learn), and assign value to the question
Question Review
- What – Students in peers provide feedback on research questions that can be used to refine them
- Why – Promote critical thinking
- How – Students individually brainstorm potential questions and approaches for investigating these questions. Students pair. Students take turns presenting questions and giving presenter warm and cool feedback about questions. After review session, students summarize feedback and revise questions.
Round-Robin Questioning
- What – Students create questions and answers and take turns asking questions of other students and giving feedback. Cooperative groups ponder questions with uncertain responses
- Why – Review & promote key ideas
- How – Teacher directs students to generate 7 questions – 6 they know the answer and 1 they are curious about but are uncertain of the answer. Students take time to record questions and answers. Teacher called on 1st student. 1st student calls on another student and asks one of her questions. He responds while she cues and probes as needed. Teacher only intervenes to clear up misconceptions and to coach questioners to give appropriate wait times and to ask probing questions. Student who responded to the first question calls on the next student and asks a question. This pattern continues until all students have taken a turn to ask a question or until activity time expires. Then students are divided into cooperative teams. They discuss their questions with uncertain responses and try to brainstorm responses. They select their favorite question to share with the whole class.
Twenty Questions
- What – Students ask 20 yes/no questions in an attempt to guess a person, place or thing related to a given topic
- Why – Practice reasoning & problem solving & how to ask relevant questions
- How – Divide students into play groups (whole class or down to groups of 5). Announce a topic. One person thinks of a person, place, or thing related to the topic. The rest of the students take turns asking yes/no questions in an attempt to funnel down to the correct person, place, or thing. Students can take a guess (in place of a question) if they think they know the answers. Teams can take up to 3 guesses to get the right answer.
Actor, Actor
- What – Students practice responding to questions from the perspective of a key person
- Why – Promote retention & engagement
- How – Divide students into teams of 4. Select a topic. Students select an important person related to the topic. One person in the topic role plays as the chosen person. The remaining team mates ask that person questions that the chosen person could answer in a distinctive way.
Question / Question
- What – Students interact using only questions
- Why – practice active listening & thinking
- How – Group students in pairs. Announce a topic. Students discuss the topic for as long as they can using only questions.
Answer/ Question
- What – Students develop questions that go with given stimuli (like Jeopardy)
- Why – promote retention & higher level thinking
- How – Select stimuli (text excerpts, diagrams, charts, etc.). Challenge students to come up with as many questions as possible that could go with the stimuli.
Talk Show
- What – Students practice conversing about a topic using the roles of actor and interviewer
- Why – apply knowledge, stimulate higher level thinking
- How – Divide students into pairs. Assign students roles – one role is a key character or person related to a current topic in class and one role is a news reporter. The students role-play the interview while acting in character.

Students who ask questions are more likely to be plugged into the learning that is occurring in class. Teaching them how to ask questions helps them approach learning more actively and more critically. Using varied protocols to encourage student questioning can give students multiple opportunities to formulate, analyze and use their questions.

Preparation Steps

Develop criteria for good questions and for types of questions. Example – question stems based on Bloom’s taxonomy
Teach students how to use criteria to generate good questions
Analyze standards and products in upcoming products.
Brainstorm which types of interactions with question will help enhance students’ learning of specific standards and development of specific products.
Select activities (see above and also here) that provide ALL students with opportunities to create, use, and respond to questions.

Early Implementation Steps

Practice using one of the alternate question response (or formulating) activities with students.
Have students reflect on what they learned as a result of the activity.
Use feedback from students to fine tune activities.

Advanced Implementation Steps

Give students feedback on the quality of their questions. Give students opportunities to use that feedback to improve their questions.
Ask students for feedback on questioning activities. Use their feedback to improve activities and to decide which activities to incorporate into class routines.

April 2, 2016May 9, 2016

123: Alternate Question Response Formats

Chapter 3 in Walsh, Jackie A., and Beth d. Sattes. Quality Questioning: Research-based Practice to Engage Every Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2005. Print.

Choral Responses
- What – Class answers at once in unison
- Why – Check for understanding, review, reinforce knowledge, drill & practice
- How – Develop routine cue to signal time of response
Signaled Answers
- What – All students answer with a hand signal
- Why – Check for understanding, review, reinforce knowledge, drill & practice
- How – Develop routine for types of signaled answers (ex: thumbs up, thumbs down)
Numbered Heads Together
- What – Students in numbered teams think together and provide response when number is called
- Why – Peer teaching, Holding students accountable to cooperative learning styles (ex: jigsaw), review concepts prior to learning new ones, activate prior knowledge
- How – Form heterogenous teams where each member has a different number (1, 2, 3 or 4). Pose question. Give teams time to compose responses. Call out a number and all students with that number raise their hands. Call on a couple students with their hands raised.
Think-Pair-Share
- What – Students process responses individually, in pairs, and with the whole group.
- Why – Review, activate prior knowledge, give students processing time prior to discussions
- How – Pose question. Give students time to compose responses quietly and individually. Give students time to share responses with a partner. Then pairs share responses with whole group.
Peoplegraph
- What – Students stand on a continuum line to express their opinion
- Why – engage students in active thinking prior to a discussion or written assignment, give students time to consider core concepts
- How – Setup way to communicate meaning of high and low values on the continuum, pose question, ask students to stand on the line according to their opinion, provide time for students in close and far proximity to share why they chose their position on the line
Data on Display
- What – Creating collective visual displays of students’ opinions
- Why – Examine assumptions. Practice hypothesizing, making predictions and analyzing data.
- How – Students given a set of questions on a workshops; each response is a percentage from 0 to 100%. Poster bar charts for each question are set up around classroom – horizontal axis is divided into 10% bins. Students use post-its to place their responses on the poster charts. Once all votes are posted, students examine each poster, notice and discuss trends.
Synectics
- What – Students use metaphors to make connections to ideas and solutions
- Why – Develop deeper insights into topics by viewing them from different perspectives. Promote divergent thinking and diverse points of view.
- How:
  - Simple – Pick 2 opposite objectives (ex: ice cream or spaghetti) Ask students to think individually whether they think a topic is more like 1 metaphor or the other. Then group students and have them discuss their associations and come to a group response. Then each group shares responses.
  - 4 corner – Pick 4 metaphors and label 4 corner of room (ex: football, tennis, basketball, golf). Place a poster post-it at each corner. Present a topic. Students decide which metaphor goes best with the topic. They work in teams with students who share their opinion to list the reasons why the topic goes with the selected metaphor (5 minutes). All 4 groups share their lists with the whole group. Then students continue discussing topics or do a related writing assignment.
Interview Design
- What – Students collect answers to interview questions in round robin style.
- Why – Encourage students to respect and become aware of different points of view. Promote active listening and note taking. Provide structure for every student to answer every question. Practice in summarizing.
- How – Divide class into 1 of 2 concentric circles. Each student gets one sheet with copy of a single interview question. Students sit in concentric circles. Time is allotted for inside person to ask outside circle person their interview question and listen and take notes (1 min). Then time is allotted for the outside person to interview the inside circle person and take notes (1 min). Then the outside person rotates 1 spot in the clockwise direction. Time is allotted for each pair of interviews. Then the outer circle rotates again until all students have had the opportunity to answer all interview questions. Then groups are assembled of students who had the same interview question. Each group looks for major themes in the responses (5-6 min) and then each group reports these to the class
Fishbowl Discussion
- What – Students discuss topics while other students take notes and analyze them for major themes
- Why – Practice note taking and active listening. Practice discussion skills and receive feedback in a safe environment.
- How – Arrange students in 2 concentric circles. Seat enough students in the inner circle to leave 1-2 seats empty. Go over discussion norms: examples: invite all people to speak. use appropriate wait time. Pose a question. Students in the inside circle discuss question while outside circle students take notes. After discussion facilitate a debrief discussion in which outer circle students share major themes and to what extend the discussion was effective
Say-It-In-A-Word
- What – Students respond to a question with a single word
- Why – Practice decision making and active listening. Level playing field by insure that every student has same opportunity for initial response.
- How – Class sits in a circle. Teacher poses a questions. Gives students processing time. Students take turns responding to question with one word. Teacher asks following up choices that ask students to explain their word choices.

Knowing alternate response formats can help teachers facilitate classroom conversations that are more varied and that require and value participation from all students. Varying the format can keep conversations fresh and high energy. For best effect, it helps to select a response format that matches an instructional goal.

Preparation Steps

Analyze standards and develop aligned learning targets.
Use characteristics of quality questions to brainstorm variety of questions that relate to learning target.
Decide which response formats go best with key questions.
Develop resources that go with selected response formats

Early Implementation Steps

Use selected response formats to encourage active participation of all students.
Have students reflect on how response formats are affecting their participation and attitude toward classroom conversations.

Advanced Implementation Steps

Poll students to find out which response formats they prefer for specific instructional formats. Use their preferences to identify response formats that can be built into classroom routines.

April 2, 2016May 9, 2016

122: Characteristics of Quality Questions

Chapter 2 in Walsh, Jackie A., and Beth d. Sattes. Quality Questioning: Research-based Practice to Engage Every Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2005. Print.

Quality questions promote 1 or more carefully defined instructional purposes
- When teachers are very deliberate and clear about the purposes of their questions, they can better assess student performance.
- When students are aware of the purposes of questions, they can better monitor and modify their responses.
- Two types of question styles
  1. Recitation:
    - teacher involved in each exchange
    - students tend to answer in short factual answers
    - usually low-level questions involving recall
    - Purposes:
      - review for test
      - check for completion of assignments
      - assess what students know about topics
      - cue students to important content
      - drill and practice
      - get students to talk
      - model good questioning
  2. Discussion:
    - typically more rare
    - teacher acts as facilitator who ensures full participation for all
    - students don’t wait for teacher’s permission to speak
    - students engage in dialogue with one another
    - students make own evaluations
    - teacher poses 1-2 provocative, open questions that start a discussion
    - Purposes:
      - student practice thinking aloud
      - encourage listening and sharing different perspectives
      - improve listening skills
      - students work out own understanding of a topic
Quality questions focus on important content
- Frameworks can help prioritize content:
  - Wiggins & Tighe Schema:
    - divide up content into 3 areas:
      - primary – big ideas, enduring understandings
      - secondary – important skills to know and do
      - tertiary – worth being familiar with
    - Good questions:
      - relate to a big idea worthy of discussion
      - aligned to standards
      - tie to needs and interests of students
  - Christenbury & Kelly Framework:
    - Model is a Venn diagram of 3 knowledge domains:
      - content knowledge
      - student prior knowledge
      - outside knowledge
    - Use questions that form a variety of 3 types:
      - Single domain questions deal with one domain
      - Overlap questions deal with 2 domains
      - Dense questions deal with 3 domains
Quality questions facilitate thinking at a stipulated cognitive level
- questions are tools for information seeking AND information processing
- when formulating questions, need to communicate to students the types of thinking needed to generate appropriate responses
- Bloom’s Taxonomy:
  - New 2-D Schema:
    - Cognitive Process Dimension
      - Remember
        
        recognize, identify, recall
        
        lower level, but essential – students need to be able to retrieve info from memory before they can use it
      - Understand
        
        interpret, exemplify, classify, summarize, infer, compare, explain
        
        connect new knowledge to prior knowledge
        
        beyond remembering – must involve information not included in initial instruction of content
      - Apply
        
        execute – apply procedure to familiar task
        
        implement – apply procedure to unfamiliar task
      - Analyze
        
        differentiate, analyze, attribute
        
        examples:
        
        separate fact from fiction
        
        back conclusions with evidence
        
        separate relevant and extraneous info
        
        identify unstated assumptions
        
        identify primary and secondary themes
      - Evaluate
        
        check – looking for internal consistency
        
        critique – comparing things to external criteria
      - Create
        
        generate, plan, produce
        
        draw upon many elements and integrate them into a novel structure relative to one’s prior knowledg
    - Question Planning Tool related to 6 Cognitive Level – Q-Card
    - Knowledge Dimension
      - Factual knowledge – knowledge of discrete packets of info
      - Conceptual knowledge – knowledge of more complex bodies of info
      - Procedural knowledge – knowledge of skills
      - Metacognitive knowledge – knowledge of one’s own cognition and about cognition in general
  - Marzano’s Taxonomy
    - Recitation questions
      - retrieve previously learned info
    - Construction questions
      - construct new knowledge not previously learned
  - Gallagher & Aschner’s Taxonomy
    - Recall
      - Remember level in Bloom’s
    - Convergent
      - lead to one correct response
    - Divergent
      - allow for several correct responses
  - Reading Teacher’s Taxonomy
    - Reading the lines
      - answer is right there in the text
    - Reading in between the lines
      - think about what text is saying
    - Reading beyond the lines
      - bring own perspectives to the text
  - Walsh & Satte’s Taxonomy
    - Recall
      - Remember level of Bloom’s
      - recall what was learned
    - Use
      - Understand, Apply, Analyze levels of Bloom’s
      - use what was learned
    - Create
      - Create and Evaluate levels of Bloom’s
      - use imagination to go beyond what was learned
- Choosing a taxonomy
  - select one that is age appropriate, aligns to content, etc
  - recommend school wide use of the same framework
- Caveats
  - Actual cognitive level of response is dependent on context and student’s prior knowledge
  - On average – 50% of student responses do not match the cognitive level of question
    - teach students the cognitive levels to help them perform at the right level
    - follow-up incorrect responses with probing questions
  - Most textbook questions are at lowest level because textbook organizes info in such a way (compared to primary sources) that answers to questions can be found in book (recall)
  - False assumption = lower level students can’t answer high cognitive level questions
    - all levels of students can answer high cognitive level questions with the right scaffolding
Good questions communicate clearly what is being asked.
- Be clear and concise
- Use student friendly language
- Sound right when spoken aloud
Good questions are seldom asked by chance
- Crafting good questions can be time consuming
- It only takes a handful of good pivotal questions to drive a lesson

Knowing the characteristics and frameworks that support quality question design can help teachers plan and implement questions that create an engaging culture of inquiry that supports students actively processing new and old knowledge at deeper levels.

Preparation Steps

Create a laminated quality question framework map. Example: could be a matrix with
- columns being Bloom’s Cognitive levels and
- rows could be Bloom’s Knowledge dimensions or rows for 3 standards
- grids squares are large enough to hole small post-its and contain notes and examples
Analyze standards in upcoming project and determine
- enduring understandings, skils, good-to-knows
- academic and character (long term & supporting) learning targets
On placement – circle the most useful types of questions
Use post-its to brainstorm high quality questions that fit with circled questions

Early Implementation Steps

Use completed quality question map to ask students questions that get them to actively process key information.
Use methods for calling on students that provide opportunities for ALL students to participate

Advanced Implementation Steps

Teach students the types of thinking in your questioning framework – teach them the question types and responses that go with each type of thinking
Model for students how to classify the question type and model how to think aloud in the correct cognitive level. Then give them time to process the question with that lens of thinking before calling on them
Continue modeling question classifying and processing (using think aloud) until students are able to this independently

April 1, 2016May 9, 2016

121: Questioning Strategies Research

Chapter 1 in Walsh, Jackie A., and Beth d. Sattes. Quality Questioning: Research-based Practice to Engage Every Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2005. Print.

Researching Findings & Implications

Teachers ask many questions.
- Research studies shows results between 1-4 questions per minute
- No studies linking number of questions to student learning
- Research shows that no questioning is worse than having questioning (even if it’s low level)
- Implications:
  - Questions promote student learning
  - Teachers should plan questions to ensure alignment to objectives and to stimulate student thinking
  - A few carefully prepared questions are preferable to large numbers of questions.
Most teacher questions are at the lowest cognitive level (fact, recall, knowledge)
- Only 20% require thinking at high levels
- Mixed results on tie between cognitive levels of questions and student achievement
- Higher-level questions promote development of thinking skils
- Implications:
  - Teachers should plan questions that get students to engage in higher level thinking.
  - Teachers should prepare questions at varied levels of thinking.
  - Teachers should help students become aware of varied levels of thinking.
Not all students are accountable to respond to questions. Teachers frequently call on volunteers and these constitute a select group of students.
- Target students (Frequent volunteers) talk more than 3x more than their classmates
- 25% of students don’t participate at all
- Students who regularly answer questions in discussion do better on standardized tests
- Implications:
  - Teachers, not students, should decide who answers questions.
  - Teachers should use strategies that give ALL students opportunities to participate.
  - Teachers should promote classroom norms that value all student responses and questions.
Teachers typically wait less than one second after asking a question before calling on a student (Wait Time 1). They wait even less time before speaking after students has answered (Wait Time 2)
- Longer wait times (1 and 2) have been shown to increase quality of student participation.
- Implications:
  - Wait times 1 and 2 give students time for students to process and give better quality responses.
  - Silence is golden.
Teachers often accept incorrect answers without probing; they frequently answer their own questions.
- Many teachers are reluctant to provide feedback to students who provide incorrect answers.
- Nearly half of student responses are at a different cognitive level than teacher questions, yet teachers generally accept their answers as sufficient without probing for correct responses.
- Probing is positively correlated with student achievement.
- Implications:
  - When the norms is that all students can give correct responses, teachers give prompts (when necessary) that guide students to correct responses.
  - When students give incomplete or incorrect responses, teachers should seek to understand those answering using probing questions.
Students ask very few content related questions
- Asking questions stimulates understanding and engagement
- Implications:
  - Student questions are essential to deep engagement with and learning of content.
  - Teachers should help students formulate good questions and make time for student questions.

Challenges to Following Through on Good Questioning Strategies:

Pressure to cover too much material
Fear of embarrassing a student
Silence during wait time is uncomfortable
Need to keep things moving
Get caught up in excitement of the lesson
Lack of patience
Lack of awareness of wait time lapses
Need to keep students active and engaged
Lack of ability to develop good higher order questions and good probing questions
Teacher driven vs. student driven classrooms

Reflection Questions:

Classroom Norms:
- Does my classroom have and support norms that value inquiry and thoughtful dialogue?
- Have I communicated these norms to my students and have them think about their impact on their learning?
Scaffolding Behaviors:
- Do I use a variety of formats to engage students in answering questions?
- Have students learned rules that go with different formats?
Student-Centered:
- Do I see myself as a facilitator of student learnings as opposed to a singular content expert?
- Are students responsible for constructing their own answers to questions and their own meanings to those questions and answers?
- Do students approach learning as a collaborative endeavor involving themselves, their peers and the teacher?
Awareness of Best Practices:
- Have you talked with students about the value of quality questioning on their learning experiences?
- How you taught your students how to formulate good questions?

Questioning best practices have been shown to increase student engagement and student learning. Knowing about the well-meaning common pitfalls of questioning practices can make one aware of what questioning strategies are missing or need improvements in one’s classroom routines. Understanding the implications of research related to questioning strategies can help one set better norms and use better practices to promote quality questioning and responding.

Preparation Steps

Videotape a lesson.
Analyze video to see how questioning strategies compare to research findings and implications above.
Reflect on reflection questions. See above.
Research and brainstorm strategies to improve questioning strategies. See Questioning Strategies articles.
Set up and promote classroom norms that promote inquiry and thoughtful dialogues.
Research various strategies for calling on ALL students during discussions.
Prepare questions that cover varied thinking levels for upcoming lessons

Early Implementation Steps

Ask students questions that cover varied thinking levels.
Allow students enough process time to give high quality responses.
Ask probing questions to learn more about incomplete or incorrect responses.
Use variety of strategies to give responding opportunities to ALL students.

Advanced Implementation Steps

Deliberated design questions that cover 6 facets of understanding and all Bloom’s levels.
Teach students cognitive models and how to formulate questions at all levels of various cognitive models – 6 facets of understanding, Bloom’s taxonomy.

Assessment articles
Questioning Strategies articles

March 17, 2016May 10, 2016

46: Six Facets of Understanding Question Stems

Wiggins, Grant P., and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1998. Print.

Explanation:

What is the concept in ….?
What are examples of …. ?
What are the characteristics/parts of …. ? Why is this so?
How might we prove/confirm/justify …?
How is … connected to … ?
What are common misconception about …?

Interpretation:

What is the meaning of …?
What does … reveal about … ?
How is … like … (analogy/metaphor)
How does …. relate to me/us?
So what?

Application:

How and when can we use this (knowledge/process) … ?
How is … applied in the larger world?
How could we use … to overcome … (obstacle, constraint, challenge)?

Perspective:

What are different points of view about … ?
How might this look from …. ‘s perspective?
How is … similar to / different from … ?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of … ?
What are the limits of … ?
What is the evidence for … ?
Is the evidence reliable? Sufficient?

Empathy:

What would it be like to walk in …. ‘s shoes?
How might … feel about … ?
How might we reach an understanding about … ?
What was …. trying to make us feel/see?

Self Knowledge:

How do I know …?
What are the limits of my knowledge about … ?
What are my blind sports about … ?
How can I best show … ?
How are my views about …. shared by … (experiences, assumptions, prejudices, values, style)?
What are my strengths and weaknesses in … ?

The six facets of understanding can be used to scaffold and assess deeper levels of understanding targeted learning goals. The question stems above can be used to design question prompts for scaffolding and assessments activities that use the six facets of understanding.

Preparation Steps

Analyze standards and determine which facets of understanding work best with standards expectations
Use question prompts above to help design assessments and reflection prompts related to focus facets

Early Implementation Steps

Use facet questions to give students formative feedback on their products and understandings so that students can refine these
Use facet questions as diagnostic questions to check if activities are supporting students and to finetune activities
Use facet questions to guide reflections and discussions about understanding learning goals

Advanced Implementation Steps

Use 6 facets sentence stems as a tool to help students generate better knows and need-to-knows during project launch and throughout the project
Convert question stems to sentence stems so that they can support student reflections on what they have already learned

March 17, 2016May 10, 2016

35: Instructional Practices for Deepening Understanding (1 of 2)

Chapter 7 in Tomlinson, Carol A., and Jay McTighe. Integrating Differentiated Instruction & Understanding by Design: Connecting Content and Kids. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2006. Print.

Use Essential Questions in Teaching
- use essential (driving) questions to launch projects and revisit throughout the project
- make questions provocative and student friendly
- make questions point toward key understandings
- Examples:
  - Math: Can everything be quantified?
  - Science: To what extent are science and common sense related?
  - Bio: How are form and function connected in the natural world?
- Can use essential question as an open-ended pre-assessment at start of a project
- Can use essential question as a diagnostic question throughout the project
- Less is more – 1 to 5 essential questions per unit
- Help students personalize the questions
- Post essential questions in the classroom
Use 6 Facets of Understanding as Instructional Tools: Use 6 facets of understanding to generate activities to explore content
- 1 – Explain: demonstrate, derive, describe, design, exhibit, express, induce, instruct, justify, model, predict, prove, show, synthesize, teach
- 2 – Interpret: analogies, critique, document, evaluate, illustrate, judge, make meaning of, make sense of, metaphors, read between the lines, represent, tell a story of, translate
- 3 – Apply: adapt, build, create, debug, decide, design, exhibit, invent, perform, produce, propose, test, use
- 4 – Perspective: analyze, argue, compare, constrast, criticize, infer
- 5 – Empathy: assume role of, believe, be like, be open to, consider, imagine, relate, role-play
- 6 – Self-knowledge: be aware of, realize, recognize, reflect, self-assess

Exploring essential questions models how knowledge is made. This contradicts the common misconception that knowledge was not made; it always existed. Essential questions answer the WHY question for why knowledge and skills are important.

The six facets allow students to explore knowledge and deepen understanding in a variety of ways. Ladders are false metaphors for learning. The brain needs both higher order and lower order thinking skills to make sense and meaning of new material. Lower order skills don’t always need to be presented first (example: we learned how to speak before we learned grammar).

Preparation Steps

Design provocative essential question(s) that are student friendly and open enough to serve as a pre-assessment and diagnostic tool
Post essential (driving) question(s) in the classroom
Decide what facets of understanding will be used to explore each learning target
Use verbs above (and research) to design activities that use several facets to explore learning
Use 6 facets to design and evaluate product rubrics. See 6 facets question stems and 6 facets scaffolding ideas articles.

Early Implementation Steps

Use essential question as an early journal prompt to pre-assess student perceptions and knowledge related to the project
Guide students to generate many questions related to essential questions and research these
Use essential question at strategic points in project to assess how student knowledge is progressing
Implement learning activities that are aligned to standards and leverage several facets of understanding
Use frequent formative assessments to give students specific feedback that they use to improve learning and products and to fine tune instruction. See article on descriptive feedback.

Advanced Implementation Steps

Teach students 6 facets and use it as a framework for students to design learning tasks that demonstrate their mastery of learning targets (these activities can replace re-tests)
Teach students to use 6 facets of understanding to reflect on their own learning and to explain which facets are helping them make a stronger deeper connections to learning targets

March 14, 2016May 10, 2016

09: Classroom Conversations

Holcomb, Cynthia. “Classroom Converations.” Region 13 Instructional Coaching Network. Austin. 15 Nov. 2016. Lecture.

Pitfalls of Many Classroom Discussions:
- mainly teacher monologues
- 80% teacher speaking, 20% students talking if lucky
- missing student explanations
- uses quick checks for comprehension without elaboration
- struggling students talk the least
- focus on fast delivery of information

Benefits of Facilitating Classroom Conversations:
- can assess student understanding in real time
- less reteach
- students are more active in their own learning

Strategies for Facilitating Good Classroom Conversations:
- Break up teacher monologues with student processing time. During student processing time, students discuss with their neighbor what they think is important and what they find confusing. After giving students pair discussion time, call on individual students randomly to share what they thought was confusing and what they thought was important.
- Use rich visuals and vocab cards (see p. 9 and 10 in slides). Ask students which words on vocab cards appear in visuals and explain why.
- Use vocab cards with research and workshops. After reading a passage or going through a couple workshop slides, ask which words were featured and what was learned related to those words.
- Use sentence stems to scaffold conversations.
- Use Better Together protocol: Periodically pause during workshop that students are annotating. During pause, students compare notes with a partner. Using comparison to add missing details to notes.
- Always / Sometimes / Never: Display statements that are true or true-ish. Ask students to identify which statements are always, sometimes and never true. Also, ask students to create statements about topics that are always, sometimes, and never true.
- Use sentence stems and vocabulary cards to scaffold synthesizing academic conversations within teams or between partners.

Knowing common pitfalls of classroom discussion can help teachers identify these and replace them with better practices. Knowing many strategies for facilitating good classroom conversations can help one scaffold academic conversations without becoming too repetitive. Facilitating good academic conversations can help students become more active agents in their own learning and can provide another form of formative assessment.

Preparation Steps

Identify key vocabulary for upcoming project
Create vocabulary cards for key vocabulary – see page 9 in slides
Research and select scaffolding strategies for learning vocabulary and for facilitating academic conversations – see above for examples
Develop resources (graphic organizers, sentence stems, question sequences, etc) for selected scaffolding strategies

Early Implementation Steps

Implement strategies for extending and deepening classroom conversations for ALL students
Use formative assessments to determine if classroom conversations are developing accurate content knowledge
Listen carefully to classroom conversation to determine if students are learning new content

Advanced Implementation Steps

Identify practices that can be used repetitively (routines) to extend and deepen frequent academic conversations
Have students reflect on how practices are helping them achieve specific learning targets
Reflect on which strategies are creating the most engagement and most achievement for students
Use tech tools such as Wiki Talki to create more opportunities for students to get peer feedback on their academic oral responses to questions