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“We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not answered, we get wise, for a well-packed question carries its answer on its back as a snail carries its shell.” - James Stephens
Questioning techniques are one of the easiest areas of instructional design that can be improved, at least in my opinion. By looking at the question stems, one can determine the level of thinking our learners are expected to demonstrate. Low-level examples almost always begin with who, what, where, when. These aren’t bad per se as you need knowledge to move up any knowledge taxonomy chart. The problem is when questions reside here and don’t push kids to think and apply their thinking in more complex ways. Learners also don’t find much purpose with these beyond just getting them right.
Herein lies one of my major issues with how I see many digital game tools used in the classroom as typically comprised of low-level, multiple-choice options. As I mentioned before, there is a time and place for this. However, it goes without saying that an emphasis on recall and memorization will not prepare kids adequately to thrive now and in the future. Disruption caused by the 4th Industrial Revolution, and living in a knowledge economy, continues to teach us this lesson. If a student can easily Google the answer, then it goes without saying that the question isn’t very challenging. In the end, questions are more important than answers if learning is the goal. More on this later.
The image above provides a great visual to look at the types of questions that are asked in classrooms or on assignments and scaffold them in ways that empower learners to demonstrate high-level thinking as well as mastery of concepts. It is important to note that each and every question doesn’t have to be at the uppermost levels of knowledge taxonomy. The key is to try to bump them up when warranted, especially if they are at the foundational knowledge level. If question stems begin with who, what, where, or when then there is a natural opportunity to tweak them in a way to get up to at least the understanding level.
Now don’t get me wrong; developing great questions that get kids thinking is excellent. However, the real goal should be the creation of performance tasks where learners are applying their thinking in relevant ways. This is where the role of instructional design is critical. When challenging learners through an authentic application where there is an underlying purpose, what results is natural inquiry. During numerous coaching visits with schools across the country, I have seen this play out over and over again. Students are so immersed in an activity that collaboration, creativity, and collaboration converge with thinking while they work to solve real-world predictable and unpredictable problems. What results is that the students then develop and answer their own questions.
The Rigor Relevance Framework, of which an iteration is pictured above, is a great tool that can assist teachers and administrators develop better questioning techniques and learning tasks to engage kids with a higher purpose. What results is the process of inquiry, which fuels the learning process. The right question isn’t necessarily about arriving at an answer per se, but instead it acts as a catalyst for the development of more questions.
Get up and write! Well, this isn’t the saying that I abide by, but making the time to reflect and hammer away at the keyboard is something that I still consistently commit to doing. There are many reasons I continue to blog regularly, but the biggest is trying to add a practical lens to many of the ideas we either see or hear about on social media. During the past year, I attempted to connect more research to either further validate my thoughts or illustrate how educators were implementing proven strategies with an innovative angle into practice. An increase in the amount of job-embedded coaching work I did in schools over an extended period of time also influenced my thinking. There is nothing better in my opinion than to see either growth or success in schools where real challenges were overcome.
In my opinion, you don’t have to be a great writer to blog. Begin with a focus on your work and that of others you spend your days with as a starting point. Remember, the act of blogging is first and foremost you and the impact that it has on your growth and development. Another outcome is the impact that it has on readers near and far. Never discount how your ideas and experiences might positively influence the work of others. Back to the whole writing thing. If you ever doubt your ability fall back on a proofreader (thanks mom) on Grammarly as I do.
Here are my top posts of 2018.
Preparing Learners for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Change isn’t coming. It’s already on our doorstep. You can’t run or hide from it. The revolution, or evolution depending on your respective lens, of our world, will transform everything as we know it. We must adapt, but more importantly, prepare our learners for a bold new world that is unpredictable. Welcome to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres marked by emerging technology breakthroughs in a number of fields, including robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, the Internet of Things, 3D printing, and fully autonomous vehicles. Education remains the key to the future. Don’t prepare students for something. Prepare them for anything!
Scaffolding Questions to Develop Deeper Understanding
The key to future-proofing school and learning is to empower all kids to think regardless of label or zip code. By using the Rigor Relevance Framework as a guide, we can begin by asking learners better questions with the goal being that they start to formulate questions on their own. With and without technology, it is crucial to create a thinking culture. Scaffolding questions enhance learning and aids in the mastery of concepts by systematically building on knowledge and relevance. The ultimate goal is to develop competent thinkers and doers who can not only use knowledge in new ways but also construct their own.
The Pivotal Role Movement Plays in Learning
Research has shown that movement in the form of brain breaks, recess, and physical education positively impacts learning. Don’t look at kids moving in class as a break or poor use of instructional time. Schools need to do more to ensure that movement is being integrated into all classes. The brain needs regular stimulation to properly function and this can come in the form of exercise or movement. Based on what is now known about the brain, this has been shown to be an effective cognitive strategy to improve memory and retrieval, strengthen learning, and enhance motivation among all learners. As research has shown, movement is an essential component of learning. If the goal is to help kids be better learners, then we have to be better at getting them up and moving in school.
Five Components of Good Feedback
Feedback is essential to improvement and growth. There is nothing more vital to our professional roles than a good discussion around evidence-based practice that paints a picture not only of what we are doing well but areas where we can either become much better or outright improve. However, for it to be effective, it must be delivered positively, timely, practical and specific, consistent, and delivered using the right medium.
To Improve Outcomes, We Need to Take a Critical Lens to Instructional Design
There is no perfection in education; thus there is always room for improvement. To get to where we want, and our learners need us to be, a routine audit of pedagogical practice is necessary. In this post, I identify five areas to look at when implementing any digital tool or innovative idea to determine whether or not improvements to pedagogy are changing. These include the level of questioning, authentic and/or interdisciplinary contexts, rigorous performance tasks, innovative assessment, and improved feedback. A question or two as a means to help self-assess where you are and if improvements can be made follows each of these areas.
Thanks to everyone who has made the time to visit my blog, read posts, and provide comments. Here’s to a fantastic 2019!
As a child, I was enamored by nature. My twin brother and I were always observing and collecting any and all types of critters we could get our hands on. Growing up in a rural area of Northwestern New Jersey made it quite easy to seek out and find different plants and animals on a daily basis. We would spend countless hours roaming around the woods, corn fields, ponds, and streams in our quest to study as much local life as possible. It’s no wonder that I eventually became a science teacher as my surroundings growing up played a major role in my eventual decision to go into the field of education.
To this day I still can’t believe how my mother tolerated us bringing an array of animals into the house. For years my brother and I were particularly interested in caterpillars. We would use encyclopedias and field guides to identify certain species that were native to our area. Through our research, we determined what each caterpillar ate and subsequently scoured trees, bushes, and other plants in our quest to collect, observe, and compare the differences between different species. We even kept journals with notes and sketches. When we were successful in locating these insects we then collected them in jars. Our research ensured that each species had the correct type of food as well as appropriate physical requirements to either make a chrysalis (butterflies) or cocoon (moths).
In the case of moths, some were in their cocoons for months. Hence, my brother and I stored these jars under our beds. At times we forgot that we had these living creatures under our beds until at night we heard sounds of them flapping their wings and moving around the jars after emerging from their cocoons. I can only imagine what my parents thought of this but am so thankful that they supported our inquiry in many ways from having encyclopedias available for research to providing us with the autonomy to harness our intrinsic motivation to learn. Through it all our observations led to questions and together with my brother and I worked to find answers. Even though we were not always successful in this endeavor, the journey was worth it. Questions and even more questions drove the inquiry process for both of us and from there we leveraged available resources and synthesized what we had learned.
The story above is a great example of how my brother and I embarked on an informal learning process driven by inquiry. We owned the process from start to finish and our parents acted as indirect facilities through their support and encouragement. Both inquiry and ownership of learning are not new concepts, although they are both thrown around interchangeably as of late, especially ownership. Deborah Voltz and Margaret Damiano-Lantz came up with this description in 1993:Ownership of learning refers to the development of a sense of connectedness, active involvement, and personal investment in the learning process. This is important for all learners in that it facilitates understanding and retention and promotes a desire to learn.
After reading this description I can’t help but see the alignment to the story I shared above. We learned not because we had to, but because we wanted to. Herein lies a potential issue in schools. Are kids learning because they are intrinsically empowered to or are they compelled to through compliance and conformity? The former results when learners have a real sense of ownership. There are many ways to empower kids to own their learning. All the rage as of late is how technology can be such a catalyst. In many cases this is true, but ownership can result if the conditions are established where kids inquire by way of their own observations and questions. WNET Education describes inquiry as follows:"Inquiry" is defined as "a seeking for truth, information, or knowledge -- seeking information by questioning." Individuals carry on the process of inquiry from the time they are born until they die. Through the process of inquiry, individuals construct much of their understanding of the natural and human-designed worlds. Inquiry implies a "need or wants to know" premise. Inquiry is not so much seeking the right answer -- because often there is none -- but rather seeking appropriate resolutions to questions and issues.
The first sentence ties in directly to the concept of ownership, but we also see how important are questions. This is why empowering learners to develop their own questions and then use an array of resources to process and share new knowledge or demonstrating an understanding of concepts are critical if ownership is the goal. The article from WNET explains why this is so important:Effective inquiry is more than just asking questions. A complex process is involved when individuals attempt to convert information and data into useful knowledge. A useful application of inquiry learning involves several factors: a context for questions, a framework for questions, a focus on questions, and different levels of questions. Well-designed inquiry learning produces knowledge formation that can be widely applied.
Ownership through inquiry is not as difficult as you might think if there is a common vision, language, expectation, and a commitment to student agency. The Rigor Relevance Framework represents a simple process to help educators and learners scaffold questions as part of the inquiry process while empowering kids to demonstrate understanding aligned with relevant contexts. By taking a critical lens to instructional design, improvement can happen now. Curiosity and passion reside in all learners. Inquiry can be used to tap into both of these elements and in the process, students will be empowered to own their learning.
Over the past couple of months, I have been working with a variety of schools and districts in the role of a coach. Most of this work is focused on digital pedagogy so naturally, I am focused on observing and collecting evidence to get a handle on both the level of instruction and the learning that is taking place. To allow educators to critically reflect on their practice I take many pictures of what I see, especially the types of learning activities with which students are engaged. After numerous visits, we all debrief and discuss the good practices that were observed, but also areas needing improvement.
The message that I try to convey is that technology should not be separate from sound instructional design, but instead serve as a ubiquitous entity that supports or enhances curriculum, instruction, and assessment. There are five main areas that are critical components of sound instructional design that I tend to focus on during debriefing conversations: level of questioning, authentic or interdisciplinary contexts, rigorous performance tasks, innovative assessments, and improved feedback. Of these five components, questioning techniques are something teachers and administrators can work to improve in every lesson.
Here is what I struggle with based on what I actually see in practice. In many cases, the "wow" factor of technology is placed ahead of getting kids to think deeply or authentically applying their learning. Take tools like Kahoot and Quizizz. There are no inherent issues with the tools themselves, educators just have to be more mindful of how they are being used. Many of these tools add either a fun or competitive factor to the process of answering low-level, multiple-choice questions. Now I am not saying that foundational knowledge is not important. It is in many cases. However, if this the only way tools like this are utilized then we are missing a golden opportunity to challenge our learners to think deeply about concepts.
While conducting some coaching visits at Wells Elementary School recently, I saw Ms. Mican using Quizizz. At first glance, all I saw were student responses to knowledge-based questions on the interactive whiteboard to check for understanding. What I saw next really made me smile. With the students sitting on the floor around the IWB Ms. Mican displayed the Quizziz results and then had the kids explain why they answered the way they did. This is a great example of scaffolding and building on the content. As I said previously, foundational knowledge provides a bridge to higher-level thinking and application. They key is to make sure when using response-based technologies that the level of questioning is addressed through scaffolding techniques. The same can be said in regard to any type of activity without technology.
Scaffolding refers to a variety of instructional techniques used to move students progressively toward stronger understanding and, ultimately, greater independence in the learning process. Questioning is an integral component of this process. NSEAD provides this synopsis on the importance of good questioning techniques. Check out the link in the previous sentence it contains a wealth of information to improve the level of questioning in any class. Historically, teachers have asked questions to check what has been learned and understood, to help them gauge whether to further review previous learning, increase or decrease the challenge, and assess whether students are ready to move forward and learn new information (factual checks - ie 'Closed' questions). This can be structured as a simple 'teacher versus the class' approach (Bat and Ball), where the teacher asks a question and accepts an answer from a volunteer, or selects/conscripts a specific student to answer. These approaches are implicit in any pedagogy, but teachers need a range of 'Open' questioning strategies to address different learning needs and situations. Teachers must also pitch questions effectively to raise the thinking challenge, target specific students or groups within the class.
The Rigor Relevance Framework provides all educators with guidance to scaffold questions. It is an action-oriented continuum that describes putting knowledge to use by giving teachers a way to develop both instruction and assessment and gives students a way to project learning goals. This framework, based on traditional elements of education yet encouraging movement from the acquisition of knowledge to the application of knowledge, charts learning along the two dimensions of higher standards and student performance.
Below is a breakdown of the four quadrants:- Quad A - Students gather and store bits of knowledge and information. Students are primarily expected to remember or understand this knowledge.
- Quad B - Students use acquired knowledge to solve problems, design solutions, and complete work. The highest level of application is to apply knowledge to new and unpredictable situations.
- Quad C - Students extend and refine their acquired knowledge to be able to use that knowledge automatically and routinely to analyze and solve problems and create solutions.
- Quad D - Students have the competence to think in complex ways and to apply their knowledge and skills they have acquired. Even when confronted with perplexing unknowns, students are able to use extensive knowledge and skill to create solutions and take action that further develops their skills and knowledge.
Below you will see how questions can be scaffolded according to each quadrant of the Rigor Relevance Framework.
With and without technology it is important to empower our learners to think. Scaffolding questions enhance learning and aids in the mastery of concepts by systematically building on knowledge and relevance. The ultimate goal is to develop competent thinkers and doers who can not only use knowledge in new ways but also construct their own.
