How I got better at questioning by D. Walker

By D. Walker

My current personal focus is on improving my questioning.  Using Jim Smith’s (The Lazy Teachers’ Handbook) advice, I actually shared this with my students.  I informed them that I am trying to improve my questioning; some of my colleagues have actually questioned my sanity in doing this but it has worked really well, indeed, in the past I have done this before and having the students understand WHY they are doing something and knowing that I have their best interests at heart has been something that has only had positive results.

Well the other day while I was thinking about how I can improve my questioning I obviously started with the well-known Bloom’s Taxonomy… (I am sad to admit I used to keep a laminated copy on my desk in the first three years of my teaching- however, I pretty much never used it)  and something ‘clicked.’

I broke it into my own version-lower to highest:

Identify

Repeat (quote)

Analyse/interpret

Evaluate

It then dawned on me that if a student followed that process - identify, quote,analyse/interpret/evaluate then what they basically had was a PEE paragraph.  I decided to take this a step further by equating the process to levels so it then (very loosely) became-

Identify=U-F

Identify and Repeat = E/D

Identify and Repeat and Analyse/Interpret = C/B

Identify and Repeat and Analyse/Interpret and Evaluate = A-A*

I then shared this with the students and got them to think about the 5ws (What, where, when, why and how) and to write an identify question, a repeat question, an analyse question and evaluate question.  Needless to say they soon made the link that the high order questions often need a HOW/WHY at the start.  I then re-iterated this idea and the need to constantly be internally evaluating in order to get better at it (because isn’t that what we do when we read/watch films etc- we are just better because we have practiced it more) and I reinforced the idea that following this sequence will avoid technique spotting and get the focus back on the pupil thinking ‘why did the writer do this?’  

Next I put a David Foster Wallace quote on the board - ‘Every love story is a ghost story’ - then get the pupils to write a response focusing on the analyse/interpret and evaluation part.  (pupils come up with absolutely amazing interpretations into this quote)

That was my starter.

Next I get the students to write down as many questions as they can in pairs for the text they are currently studying (A Christmas Carol is what I am doing with my year 8s).  I get some feedback and get them to choose one question to put on a question wall- they then write and stick up their question: (I say that it can be any one of the four high order thinking skills. There are some examples below:

The students then have to choose one question (not their own) and answer it for home learning as best as they can. 

In the plenary, I use Phil Beadle’s pick a number between 1+25 and then in that many words, explain what you learnt. Ticks off that numeracy need.

Poetry with year 9 - Quick post about being a bit bonkers

By H.O'Shea

One of those lessons when I leave the classroom with a broad grin - at the students' responses as much as the realisation that I might have been a bit OTT... again!

We've just started looking at poems from other cultures and after a couple of introductory lessons (including listening to and discussing point of view in this wonderful extract from The Arrival of BrightEye), we looked at Island Man by Grace Nichols.

After the usual opening tasks, pics to sort out in different piles (and justify) in different ways (pictures of Jamaica vs London) and listening to their fabulous ideas, we listened to a couple of readings of the poem. The second one is this great one from the BBC Learning Zone:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/grace-nichols-island-man-poem-only/1368.html 

1 minute in their groups to discuss everything they had to say about what they had just heard... (grouped tables in a maths room)
Then a beautiful burst of hands up which I had to painfully ignore as usual, at least at first. Everyone I asked had something to say, then I relented and asked a couple of the hands up; everything from the slow rhythm to the change in pace and atmosphere was already picked up, the tone of the writing and the mood of the man/character in the poem.

So far so good. The beauty of the poem is in its simplicity but also in the beautifully crafted images that are woven throughout which are much harder to explain - and this was of course the next challenge.

We had a quick discussion (spur of the moment) about the difference between poetry and prose and after listening to their ideas, I suggested that the beauty of a poem is that it has to condense meaning to make every word count... Not sure everyone got that... hadn't really planned it.

I asked the students to read the poem through twice in silence, pen in hand. On the second reading, they were asked to underline / highlight / flag up: 
- favourite line(s)
- Interesting lines/phrases or phrases difficult to understand straight away
- change of pace / mood / atmosphere

...and to write down questions they had about the poem and its content or language.

Cue a couple of minutes to discuss at their table what they'd found out/ highlighted/asked, then listened to some of their questions, asking them to rephrase when needed, bouncing back the questions to other pupils to clarify them.

Had I had more time (and remembered to bring some flipchart paper with me), I would have recorded them all but I wanted to discuss a few key phrases before the end of the lesson.
Boardmarker in hand, I asked pupils to tell me which phrases they'd found interesting and puzzling or difficult to understand, and proceeded to record them quickly on the board.

We picked a first one and I asked them to identify the actual word(s) that made it difficult to understand. Great discussion followed: several ambitious interpretations...

Then the lightbulb moment - what if the poet meant all these things at once? They loved that. We moved on to two more lines and they were great.

Lines we looked at included: 
"his crumpled pillow waves"
"the steady breaking and wombing" (lots of mime cradling from me as we clarified that one)
"Comes back to sands
of a grey metallic soar"

We had to leave it then as we'd all forgotten to look at the clock. I went back to my idea of "condensed meaning" and asked them to try and explain to each other, then to me, what I meant by that.

I left them with an impassioned call to "embrace the difficult phrases" (arms extended) as they are so rewarding when you unpick them a little. Then I said it again in a very earnest tone and to my delight, several heads nodded in all seriousness (particularly that really able young lady who can look a bit jaded at times...) 

I had to wait till they had all left the room to burst out laughing (and it wasn't easy to get rid of them all - some stayed behind to share more ideas about the "sands" bit from the poem). I could still hear myself urging them to "embrace the difficult phrases"... That really wasn't on the original "script" but it pays to get a bit carried away at times :)

I quite like the idea that they think I'm slightly bonkers...

UPDATE:
Well, the essays have been written and marked... I am pleased!!!

A few nuggets:

Exam Prep with Year 13 Media

By H.O'Shea

We've worked hard, we've struggled along the way...
I've made (too many) resources available, including on the Critical Perspectives  blog there and the We Media and Democracy scoop.it page here.

Drawing everything together is no easy task. So many theorists and so many case studies, so many key points and other things to remember for the exam...
We have done essay plans as a class for several questions but it is difficult to jump from a plan to a competent essay, so I thought I might try the hexagons again.

Starter: Just a minute in teams (pairs) - Topics included: convergence, citizen journalism, democracy, Henry Jenkins, digital determinism, public sphere (quite random)

Then time for exam practice - I settled on "To what extent do new media enrich democracy?"
I distributed blank hexagons. Given that students have to explore 2 'areas' in 60 min in the exam, I split the topics between teams - they would focus on either Social Media/Citizen Journalism or Creativity/Prosumers

On hexagons, they started by writing down key ideas, media, theorists and case studies.
Then they started linking them together.
After a few false starts, they got into it and were increasingly happy with their "branches", though on reflection all had 'weaker' areas or were unhappy with the way they had positioned certain things in terms of the structure. We agreed that it's better to struggle with the flow of the piece now than in the exam room.

Once hexagons were stuck down, pairs filmed themselves talking through their plan and connections.
One of them is below:

Short extract from M. and J.'s "talk-through"  

The pair filmed on the iPad (so easy) whilst others used the other cameras... Cue problem with the Media drive on the Macs and the editing got nowhere but we could watch the footage on the camera. 

The good thing is that gaps in knowledge and understanding are EXPOSED - nowhere to hide them. I actually had to prompt another group quite a bit through theirs as they were a bit stuck after 3 minutes.
What needed to be revised / consolidated / researched further was obvious.

Ideally, the task set was to watch through the vids at home (from the blog there) and critique through comments before the next lesson. That did not happen. I had already lost a third of students to other exams and re-sits, and most of them had some more exams that week.
We could however watch through them again and simply talk through strengths as well as issues and shortcomings, and address the latter.

I need to do this a little earlier next year...

Students found the exercise really useful and great prep for essay writing. Practice questions (the few that were handed in) were good. Let's wait for the 16th August...


(UPDATE: THEY DID WELL!!!)