Guiding Students to ask the "Right" Questions

Formal observations and walk-throughs, key components of Charlotte Danielson's Framework, can be scary, humbling experiences for any teacher. A teacher can feel like a master of her domain until the dreaded administrative visit. Having a third party in the classroom can be a distraction--for teacher and students alike. My previous school was a large, underperforming urban high school. Our classrooms were frequently visited--announced and unannounced. The walk-throughs and formal observations were so frequent that we joked that we should have coffee and donuts on hand for visitors. While we often felt like we under a microscope, we learned to take advantage of these visits. Why not take advantage of it?

How can I leverage this visit to improve the experience of my students?

It is that mentality I carry with me as I continue to grow as a teacher of English and Social Studies. If I must have this observation, how can I leverage it for my students? After the observation, I debriefed with my observer. The focus of our post-observation debrief was student questions and the formulation of them, most particularly during a discussion. The lesson was a fishbowl discussion, so questioning peers was integral to the activity. Not only were students interacting inside the fishbowl, but those in the outside circle were backchanneling on Today's Meet. Both forums showed evidence of lower level, closed questions. My immediate thought:

How can I propel my students to think critically about the content and formulate higher level questions?

Research 

Through independent research, I discovered the The Question Formulation Technique through these articles: 

Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana

The Right Questions by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana.

While Rothstein, Santana and other colleagues created this protocol 20 years ago, it is still relevant today, if not more so than ever before. As the push for inquiry-based classrooms continues to spread, we need to teach students how to ask questions. I have long been a proponent and practitioner of turning the traditional classroom dynamic on its head. Education is not about my learning, it is about the learning of the students in the classroom. They should be asking the questions, not me. If they are asking the questions, they are engaged and learning. 

The QFT is simple to understand. There are four steps (slide 15) that are brief and can easily be applied to most anything. In order to organically implement into instruction, I decided that the students would follow this process as a means to review for the midterm exam. 

Day One

After completing the initial introduction to the QFT, students broke into groups of four to try it out. I created a Question Focus (slide 14) and let them loose! They wrote questions on post-it notes (my favorite ed tech tool!) and sorted them into "open questions" and "closed questions."

Day Two

On day two, the students moved back into the same groups and touched upon Step #3 of the QFT: Improve Questions. Then, using a Google Form (my true love in life!) students submitted all questions which filtered into a Google Sheet. I reviewed the Sheet and pushed out the link, so each student could make a copy. For the next 30 minutes, students reflected upon the questions (135 total!) and gauged their own understanding of the content via the questions. Individually, students sorted the questions into three categories: novice, intermediate and master by numbering and color coding each cell. At the conclusion of class, we discussed what the purpose of the spreadsheet was. Students understood that they should use it as a means to prioritize and plan their studying.

Day Three

Then, on day three, we revisited Step #3 by converting questions into the opposite type. For example, students turned an open question into a closed question. The objective of this activity was for students to understand the difference of the two types. We discussed that while both types have a place in the classroom, we need to formulate more open questions.

Students again dove into their individual spreadsheets to identify the questions (Step #4) with which they did not feel confident in their understanding. They extracted the key words from the questions and jotted them down on post-it notes, which were then placed on the board. We used the post-its to play a classroom version of "Hedbandz." The objective of the game is guess the term on a card, which is attached to a headband on Player A's head. In pursuit of an answer, Player A asks Player B closed questions. Here's a slight twist that I threw in: Player B had to choose post-its of topics they felt they had mastered.

After 15-20 minutes, the game came to an end and we moved into a full group discussion for further clarification of the content. It is this part of the lesson that I would change next time. Next time, I will divide the classroom space into two sections: group discussion and quiet review. In order to accommodate all learners, I want to create safe spaces for studying, whether a student wants to speak to others or independently review.

Reflection and Vision

Pushing students to ask the right questions and reflect upon their learning are my two goals for this last quarter of the year. I will continue to spiral the QFT into instruction. For example, students were given 5 minutes today to work with this Question Focus (based on our essential question for this portion of the unit): Judaism, Christianity and Islam are connected. In the coming weeks, I am going to "bump" up the expectations of the questions. Now, I am pleased that they are asking more open questions, but the goal is for them to differentiate between low-level and high-level questions.

I am also starting to notice more attempts by students to ask thoughtful questions on our weekly discussion boards. I joke that discussion boards are not named "response boards" for a reason. The boards are a place for intellectual dialogue. Students may not understand how to have intellectual dialogue, which goes above and beyond simply listening and agreeing. Through the explicit infusion of these skills into instructional practice, it is my hope that students will be able to engage more deeply with the content.

Below are the slides that I created to walk the students through the QFT. We will continue to refer back to them throughout the year.