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7 Strategies To Help Students Ask Great Questions

7 Strategies To Help Students Ask Great Questions
Bring TeachThought Professional Development To Your School! 7 Strategies To Help Students Ask Great Questions by Terry Heick Questions can be extraordinary learning tools. A good question can open minds, shift paradigms, and force the uncomfortable but transformational cognitive dissonance that can help create thinkers. In education, we tend to value a student’s ability to answer our questions. The latter is a topic for another day, but the former is why we’re here. 8 Strategies To Help Students Ask Great Questions 1. The TeachThought Learning Taxonomy is a template for critical thinking that frames cognition across six categories. It imagines any learning product, goal, or objective as a “thing,” then suggests different ways to think about said “thing”–mitosis, a math formula, an historical figure, a poem, a poet, a computer coding language, a political concept, a literary device, etc. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. A literary device–a metaphor example, is usually studied in isolation. The upside? 2. Related:  Assessment & FeedbackInquiry-based learning Resources

Giving Assessment Feedback Devising strategies for feedback can save you time by reducing: the number of complaints from students who believe they have been unfairly marked the amount of time lecturers spend reading assignments that do not answer the question the amount of confusion between markers as to what the submission is supposed to look like. The time involved to set up the strategies will be more than recouped in the course of the semester. Plan for assessment feedback Modes of feedback You can provide assessment feedback to students in different modes, at different times and places, and with different goals. Figure 1: Dimensions of feedback modes In any one course, the feedback plan would ideally incorporate a mixture of dimensions, appropriate to the assessment activity and the students' needs. You can think of the STUDENT-LED/TEACHER-LED dimension as a dialogue between student and teacher, using feedback (Nicol, 2010). Prepare students for feedback Align feedback with assessment criteria Use comments sheets

How to lose weight (in the browser) And what if we got together a bunch of experts who work on large sites to create a definitive front-end performance guide? And not just one of those boring guides made for robots, what if we did something fun? What about getting together Briza Bueno (Americanas.com), Davidson Fellipe (Globo.com), Giovanni Keppelen (ex-Peixe Urbano), Jaydson Gomes (Terra), Marcel Duran (Twitter), Mike Taylor (Opera), Renato Mangini (Google), and Sérgio Lopes (Caelum) to make the best reference possible? That's exactly what we've done! — Zeno Rocha, project lead. Of course it matters and you know it. There are three basic ways for you to include CSS or JavaScript on your page: 1) Inline: the CSS is defined inside a style attribute and the JavaScript inside an onclick attribute for example, in any HTML tag; 2) Embedded: the CSS is defined inside a <style> tag and the JavaScript inside a <script> tag; 3) External: the CSS is loaded from a <link> and the JavaScript from the src attribute of the <script> tag. Bonus

18 more ways to introduce your lesson topic This term I’ve tried out a few different ways to introduce a lesson. These ones have worked well. They might be worth reading if you’ve exhausted my previous list! Song lyric gap fill Example: 3rd conditional, regrets Do a short gap fill on part of a song related to your topic. Regrets, I’ve had a few… (1.19 – 1.30) Topic: Geography Sporcle is full of great quizzes in various formats. Don’t tell football mad students that there are an abundance of Premier League quizzes on the site – unless you’re in need of a highly motivational end of class reward! A short performance – miming Example topic: past perfect Students watch a teacher do a short mime at the front of class and speculate about what happened. A short performance – character acting Topic: any book/story/news article involving a character Tell students that you will be in role as a character from the story they will read today. Recent examples I was a builder who had won the lottery Sights and Sounds Example topic: sports Ask them: Mind maps

The Genius Hour Design Cycle: A Process For Planning - 3. Some students need a push in the right direction Some students will come up with projects that are too simple with answers that could be easily Googled. We introduced the students to ‘High Order Thinking Skills’ and built these into the planning forms students complete. Projects need to include elements of synthesis, evaluation and creativity with the minimum requirement adjusted for individuals. We provide students with a list of verbs appropriate for the top levels of Bloom’s taxonomy and help them use these in framing their topics. 4. A student might have a passion for surfing and decide they are going to write a book about the history of the sport. 5. It can be hard to say no to a project but some are just not feasible. 6. Some projects will clearly take longer than you have available, others are simply too large in scale or will rely on the involvement of too many people. 7. One of the challenges for some students has been the ever changing project. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Brain Teasers And Games To Test Your Brain Here you can enjoy the Top 25 Brain Teasers, Games & Illusions that SharpBrains readers (primarily adults, but some younger minds too) have enjoyed the most. It is always good to learn more about our brains and to exercise them!. Fun experiments on how our brains and minds work 1. You think you know the colors? 2. 3. 4. Challenge your attention and memory 5. 6. 7. Optical illusions 8. 9. 10. 11. Language and logic puzzles 12. 13. 14. 15. A few visual workouts 16. 17. 18. Teasing your pattern recognition and thinking 19. 20. 21. 22. Brain teasers for job interviews 23. 24. 25.

Assessment - Feedback and Assessment - Toolkit for Learning and Teaching - LeTS Validity: Assessment and curriculum design | Defining formative and summative assessment | Principles of Assessment | Ensuring reliability of assessment | In Practice | Resources Students often take their cues about what they need to learn more from assessment than from teaching. Helping students understand the different forms of assessment is part of the process of guiding them through the transition to the postsecondary environment. With the range of assessment methods available in learning and teaching, it is important that students understand what is expected of them and how to achieve the results to which they aspire by providing a clear and transparent explanation of the method used. It may be useful to discuss different forms of assessment, including formative and summative, in group tutorials. It is also important to advise students what constitutes unfair means in assessment, for example, plagiarism or collusion, and help them develop good academic practice. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

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30 Habits Of Highly Effective Teachers Editor’s Note: We often look at the qualities and characteristics of good teaching and learning, including the recent following pieces: How A Good Teacher Becomes Great What You Owe Your Students Ten Secrets To Surviving As A Teacher The Characteristics Of A Highly Effective Learning Environment How To Be A Mediocre Teacher 25 Things Successful Teachers Do Differently by Julie DuNeen, Sketch Note Via Janet Hamilton If you ask a student what makes him or her successful in school, you probably won’t hear about some fantastic new book or video lecture series. What students take away from a successful education usually centers on a personal connection with a teacher who instilled passion and inspiration for their subject. Are teachers reaching their students? 1. How do you know if you are driving the right way when you are traveling somewhere new? 2. We can’t all be blessed with “epic” workdays all the time. 3. 4. 5. 6. This concept is similar for parents as well. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

IDEA: Kath Murdoch strategies for integrated learning | SmartPrimaryEd What is integrated learning? ** If you are interested in activities and strategies to use during inquiries, please also see: Making thinking visible, Thinking routines 1, Thinking routines 2 and Thinking routines 3. You can see more from Kath Murdoch on the post: IDEA: Kath Murdoch and Inquiry Learning An integrated curriculum is a way to teach students that attempts to break down barriers between subjects and make learning more meaningful to students. An advantage being the value of helping students to make connections within and across learning areas. Kath Murdoch’s inquiry-based Framework for a sequence of activities and some strategies that you can plan to utilise when you teach your inquiry: * tuning in Tuning in: * finding out Finding out: * sorting out Sorting out: Through dance and drama Free movementFreeze frameMimeThe conscience gamePuppet playsRole-playTalk showsSimulations Through media and visual arts Through mathematics Through music Through english * going further Going further:

17 Ideas to Help Combat Learned Helplessness By Sarah Tantillo Recently I’ve been thinking about the ways in which we either inculcate or prevent learned helplessness in students. Some teaching practices help strengthen students’ self-efficacy, motivation and confidence, while others have the opposite effect. Here’s some useful advice, sharing ways to deter “learned helplessness.” 1. IF: You assign classwork and then go over it before holding students accountable for having completed it… THEN: Students realize they can wait till the timer rings, then copy the answers as you go over them. SO DO THIS INSTEAD: Either circulate and assign credit (with a stamp or initial) as students work, collect it before reviewing, or provide and give credit for “notes from discussion” that students must complete in addition. 2. IF: You fail to make a pitch for the lesson’s objective… THEN: Students will wonder, Why are we doing this? 3. IF: You fail to model the work (esp. without interruption) and/or you skip guided practice… 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Feedback and feed forward What are the issues? There is a considerable body of research around the role of feedback in supporting learning and evidence of what constitutes good and effective practice. Nevertheless our 2012 study of the assessment and feedback landscape (pdf) found that approaches to feedback in universities and colleges remained extremely diverse. Issues include: Timeliness of feedback in relation to informing future assignmentsQuality of feedback in relation to supporting future developmentInconsistent approaches even within a single moduleFeedback not stored so that it is accessible to staff and students. This guide draws on our body of work around assessment and feedback. Towards longitudinal development Longitudinal development involves a shift from assessment of learning to assessment for learning. With a longitudinal approach, feedback is seen as more developmental and less corrective and short term. The concepts of feedback, feed forward and ipsative approaches are key: Find out more?

A Map of Learning Theory Concepts, Theorists, Paradigms and Disciplines Learning theory is complex, and while the graphic below may initially seem to reinforce that idea, it actually makes a complicated topic very digestible. Richard Millwood is an assistant professor at Trinity College Dublin, and he also runs Core Education, a nonprofit that helps schools use technology for better learning outcomes. As part of his work for the HoTEL Project (Holistic Approach to Technology Enhanced Learning), Millwood created this guide to learning theories. On his blog, Millwood describes his motivation to collect information and resources about learning theories featured in the map: Learning theory has been a contested scientific field for most of its history, with conflicting contributions from many scientific disciplines, practice and policy positions. Check out the graphic below, and click here for the interactive version.

LearningApps - interactive and multimedia learning blocks Inquiry Pedagogy - 21st Century HSIE What is Inquiry Pedagogy? Pedagogy is defined as “any conscious activity by one person designed to enhance learning in another” (Watkins & Mortimer, 1999, p. 3). Inquiry pedagogy therefore, is based around a set of teaching and learning strategies that involve student-centred research and investigation that encourages metacognitive thought processes, discussion and collaboration. Carroll defines Inquiry Pedagogy as an understanding about society and its interactions that "requires us to seek out knowledge as well as apply historical skills to determine why events occurred and what motivated the people to take the action they took" (2012). References:Carroll, K. (2012). What does Inquiry Learning look like? Inquiry learning is based on constructivist theory, where learning is seen as a social process involving a mutual exploration of ideas through experiences and language (Cross, 1996). Alternate inquiry models include TELSTAR, the Action Research Model and Integrating Socially.

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