Inquiry Strategies for the Journey North Teacher. How do you react to student answers in class? [[AAPT Session: Effects of variation of faculty practice on student perceptions, Chandra Turpen]] Many faculty and high school teachers use some form of peer instruction or student response system (like clickers) as promoted by Eric Mazur, but they’re used in a huge variety of ways in the classroom. This has a sizeable impact on their effectiveness and how students respond to them, which has been the topic of study for a while.
My program has created a document on Best Practices in Clicker Use that you can download. This current study focussed on how faculty responded to student answers to clicker questions. Did they focus on getting the right answer, or making sense of the answer? (In ed speak this is “answer making” versus “sense making”). She found that new faculty rarely discussed the incorrect options to a question, and why they were incorrect. Tagged as: college, how people learn, K-12. Why don't college students ask questions in class? Module 13: Behaving Equitably and Responding Affirmatively to Questions. By Robert J. Marzano, Barbara B. Gaddy, Maria C. Foseid, Mark P. Foseid and Jana S. Marzano Another key to fostering effective relationships with students is ensuring that classroom interactions are equitable and positive.
As described in Classroom Management That Works (Marzano, 2003), one of the most popular professional development programs is Teacher Expectations and Student Achievement, or TESA. Questioning Strategies. Planning questions Effective questioning sessions in classroom require advance preparation. While some instructors may be skilled in extemporaneous questioning, many find that such questions have phrasing problems, are not organized in a logical sequence, or do not require students to use the desired thinking skills. Levels and types of questions People often refer to "lower-level" and "higher-level" questions or behaviors, rather than assigning a specific level to those questions or behaviors. Lower-level questions are typically at the remember, understand, and apply levels of the taxonomy and are most appropriate for: evaluating students' preparation and comprehension diagnosing students' strengths and weaknesses reviewing and/or summarizing content Higher-level questions involve the ability to analyze, evaluate, or create, and are most appropriate for: Typically, an instructor would vary the level of questions within a single class period.
Steps for planning questions. Questioning, Listening and Responding - C. Roland Christensen Center for Teaching and Learning. It would be hard to name a more valuable pedagogical accomplishment than the mastery of questioning, listening, and response: three teaching skills as linked, though distinct, as the panels of a triptych. (C. Roland Christensen, Education for Judgment, 1991) The three essential skills of questioning, listening and responding are the backbone of discussion-based teaching. While each is important in its own right, the skills are intricately interrelated: the potential effect of a good question is only fully realized if accompanied by active listening, which in turn is an essential prerequisite for the appropriate response, whether in the form of an acknowledgment or further questioning. Questioning Experienced case instructors employ different types of questions at various points in the class to shape the arc of the discussion toward student discovery and learning.
Listening. Responding. Education Week. Responding to Students' Comments | Center for Teaching and Learning. In Bertolt Brecht’s play Galileo, the scientist is asking a very young student to explain some complex scientific point. The boy is incorrect and Galileo shouts, “Wrong! Stupid!” Except for the one faculty member (probably at an east coast school) who revels in tripping up students, most of us wish we had really good ways for responding when students provide incorrect or off-the-wall answers in class.
Developing an ease, a facility, with correcting wrong answers, something we call the Berkeley Correctional Facility, is not easy, but makes for a better classroom experience overall. Since there’s not a magic bullet, we’ve compiled good ideas from a number of university teaching centers. If a student gives an incorrect or weak answer, point out what is incorrect or weak about the answer, but ask the student a follow-up question that will lead that student, and the class, to the correct or stronger answer.
Washington University, St. Respond to “off target” comments encouragingly. Responding to Student Comments and Using Praise Appropriately. Description: Simply informing a student that an answer is correct. The best response to a correct answer is often a plain, unemotional statement that, yes, that answer is correct. We might say Correct. Right. Contrast these with such responses as, “Wonderful! Note that it's often useful to follow a Plain Correct with a restatement of the information (Saphier & Gower, 1997), as by saying, “That is right. Strategy 20-2: Plain Incorrects Purpose: To inform students that an answer is incorrect without adding distracting emotions.
Description: Simply informing a student that an answer is not correct. Like our responses using Plain Corrects, our responses when students answer incorrectly might best be brief and unemotional: No, the correct answer is Louisiana Purchase. With the Plain Incorrect response, we simply give the correct answer and move on. Should we try to draw out an answer from a student who has answered incorrectly? Should we call on a second student? Here are a few examples: Socrative. Culture of thinking. 5 Powerful Questions Teachers Can Ask Students.
My first year teaching a literacy coach came to observe my classroom. After the students left, she commented on how I asked the whole class a question, would wait just a few seconds, and then answer it myself. "It's cute," she added. Um, I don't think she thought it was so cute. I think she was treading lightly on the ever-so shaky ego of a brand-new teacher while still giving me some very necessary feedback. So that day, I learned about wait/think time. Many would agree that for inquiry to be alive and well in a classroom that, amongst other things, the teacher needs to be expert at asking strategic questions, and not only asking well-designed ones, but ones that will also lead students to questions of their own. Keeping It Simple I also learned over the years that asking straightforward, simply-worded questions can be just as effective as those intricate ones. . #1. This question interrupts us from telling too much.
. #2. . #3. . #4. . #5. How do you ask questions in your classroom? Thought Questions - Asking the right questions is the answer. Why Do Teachers Ask the Questions They Ask? Although teacher questioning has received much attention in the past few years, studies on teacher questions in the ESL classroom have so far revolved around the ‘closed’/‘open’ or ‘display’/‘referential’ distinction. Findings from classroom observations show excessive use of closed questions by teachers in the classroom. The argument that has been more or less accepted is that such questions seek to elicit short, restricted student responses and are therefore purposeless in the classroom setting.
This paper attempts to conduct an analytical discussion of the argument. The questions of three non-native ESL teachers during reading comprehension in the upper secondary school in Brunei are analysed using a three-level question construct. Through this three-level question analysis, it is possible to challenge the argument concerning question types and purposes. Do We Really Have High Expectations for All Students? By Barbara Blackburn Do you have high expectations for your students? I’ve never met a teacher who said, “I have low expectations for my students.” The challenge is that we sometimes have hidden low expectations of certain students. One year, early in my teaching career, several teachers “warned” me about Daniel, a new student in my room. During class, he certainly lived up to (really down to) the teachers’ comments. Despite my efforts, my expectations for him became lower, with the words “They warned me” echoing in the back of my mind. Right from the start, no matter what anyone tells us, we have to be on guard to ensure that we keep high expectations in place for every single student.
Our behaviors speak loudest Of course we may believe in high expectations for all the kids in our classroom but not translate those expectations into actions that support our beliefs. Robert Marzano has spent decades researching effective teaching practice. I know I made that mistake as a new teacher. 38 Question Starters based on Bloom’s Taxonomy - Curriculet. Curriculet is free for teachers and students. Get started here. This is the 2nd post in a series on how to write better curriculets (and literacy curriculum).
Our first post can be found here. In this blog post, Lindsey Howe shares some of the best practices she has developed as a teacher and curriculet writer. Lindsey is one of Curriculet’s first writers and she has taught high school English for 8 years. Read her bio. Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Write Curriculets By Lindsey Howe, Curriculet writer and teacher During the five months I have been writing for Curriculet, I have experimented with many different ways to tackle question-crafting. While looking for ways to improve my questions, I discovered this list of 38 question starters based on Bloom’s Taxonomy. List of Question Starter Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy This list moves through the 6 taxonomy levels with questions for each one.
Level 1: Remember – Recalling Information Question Starters: What is…? Can you explain why…? The Question Game: A Playful Way To Teach Critical Thinking. The Question Game by Sophie Wrobel, geist.avesophos.de The Question Game: A Playful Way To Teach Critical Thinking Big idea: Teaching kids to ask smart questions on their own A four-year-old asks on average about 400 questions per day, and an adult hardly asks any.
In A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas, Warren Berger suggests that there are three main questions which help in problem solving: Why questions, What If questions, and How questions. Regardless of the question, the question needs to be phrased openly and positively in order to achieve positive results – a closed or negative question only raises bad feelings against each other. Why questions help to find the root of a problemWhat If questions open up the floor for creative solutionsHow questions focus on developing practical solutions Learning Goal: A Pattern Of Critical Thinking Introducing The Question Game Evaluating Learning Progress.
Teacher Questions: An Alternative? Kant declared false the commonplace saying “That may be true in theory, but it won’t work in practice.” He acknowledged that there might be difficulties in application, but he said that if a proposition is true in theory, it must work in practice. What about the proposition “If teachers don’t ask questions, students will ask more and better ones”? A preponderance of practical and empirical evidence shows that teacher questions suppress student questions (see the Dillon reference).
Thus we have every reason to believe that if you want students to develop, ask, and attempt to answer their own questions, we have to quit asking the kinds of questions teachers typically ask. Applying that idea is difficult. Teachers have trouble imagining how discussion can be fostered and guided without questions. I recall attempts I made to increase and raise the level of student questions in one of my courses. Looking back, I think I know why my reading questions worked so well. He asked questions. Who Wants to Know? Use Student Questions to Drive Learning | Edutopia. Martin Luther King, Jr. considered this to be life's most persistent and urgent question: "What are you doing for others?
" As we approach the holiday that honors his legacy, here's another question worth pondering: How many of your students know how to ask persistent and urgent questions of their own? Knowing how to formulate a good question -- and having the courage to ask it -- is a skill with profound social justice implications. Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana, founders of the Right Question Institute, first became interested in questioning techniques when they were working with parents in a low-income community. Parents told them they didn't participate in their children's education because they didn't know what to ask. That was more than 20 years ago. By now, Rothstein and Santana have taught question-formulation techniques everywhere from homeless shelters to adult literacy classes to community health centers. Ask as many questions as you can.
8 ways teachers can talk less and get kids talking more. If you do fewer teacher-directed activities, that means the kids will naturally do more talking, doesn’t it? Not necessarily. I have often found myself talking almost constantly during group work and student-directed projects because I’m trying to push kids’ thinking, provide feedback, and help them stay on task. Even when the learning has been turned over to the students, it’s still tempting to spend too much time giving directions, repeating important information, and telling students how they did instead of asking them to reflect on their work.
Here are 8 ways teachers can talk less and get students talking more: 1. Don’t steal the struggle. It can be uncomfortable to watch kids struggle to figure out an answer, but they need time and silence to work through it. 2. It’s easy to get in an instructional rut when you stand at the same place near the board all day long. 3. 4. 5. 6. If you’ve ever asked kids “Are you getting this?” 7. 8. A space: at the table. Throughout the year, as a class, we will be unpacking a few major skill sets.
Understanding how to listen to and participate in a fruitful, engaging and critical discussion is one of those skills. Miss Guinto and I have been working together to create inviting environment in which you feel confident and comfortable to be yourself and share your thoughts, feels and idea. Miss G has done a great job on her blog Meta, but writing up a list of expectations guidelines on how to do this. For the most part, I have used her words below to explain the "Round Table" Expectations*. The majority of our discussions will be conducted this way and it is important that we are all on the same page regarding appropriate behavior at the table.
Here goes:Prepare. Come to the table ready with observations, assertions and questions.Listen carefully. *Round Table Expectations and Cindy Adams’ guidelines for Socratic Seminar. Slowing Down to Learn: Mindful Pauses That Can Help Student Engagement. 8 Strategies To Help Students Ask Great Questions. Questioning - Top Ten Strategies.