TeachLoveLearn: June 2017

As teachers questions are crucial to a student's learning....right? But why are we asking a majority of the questions? Shouldn't we be encouraging our students to be curious, to challenge one another, and to ask questions?

It is important that we, the educators develop questions in a way that we are not giving away the answers, we should be developing questions that lead our students to more questions! Having them develop those key questions to guide and encourage academic conversation among their peers. This is a strategy that can be used in any classroom discipline. As teachers, we need to be working as facilitators or coaches, not standing an delivering information. W should work to building a culture of respect, curiosity, and conversation within our classroom. This can be done by using accountable talk. There is minimal benefit, if any a all of students memorizing information and regurgitating what they think we want to hear.

Having students develop questions is empowering, develops passion and ownership. It builds engagement and active thinkers.

How do we build this culture?

Accountable talk and student developed questions are skills that need to be practiced from day 1 by putting students in charge of their learning.
Provide the proper materials. I give my students the Costa's and Bloom's question stems. We review the question levels, when to use them, and their significance.
We start with a simple conversation on a book they read over the summer or current event. The student will create a level 1, 2, or 3 question.
We then use these questions to conduct accountable talk among the class
This is when the students will throw a question out to the class about the topic and the students must answer using accountable talk, I also provide stems to the students here as well.

For example, "Which character in the book do you feel to be one that you can relate to and why?" ANSWER: " I feel I can relate to John the best because__________, as it says on page ____." Students must give their answer, rationale, and evidence for every answer they give.

Once this becomes the norm and culture within the classroom, students

can meet in small groups for conversations, led by their very own questions.
You must encourage the use of accountable talk ALWAYS in your discussion in order to have it become the norm in your classroom. Try it out, starts simply by throwing a question out to your kids on something easy and seeing where the conversations goes....I think you' ll be surprised!

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