Group items tagged

"Essential questions rarely arise in a first draft. Here's how to construct good ones. The well-known aphorism that "writing is revision" applies particularly well to crafting essential questions. With more than 30 years' experience in teaching through questions and helping educators create great unit-framing queries, we've repeatedly seen the wisdom of this saying."

"When asked why he became a scientist, Nobel Laureate Isidor Rabi attributed his success to his mother. Every day, she would ask him the same question about his school day: "Did you ask a good question today?" "Asking good questions - made me become a scientist!" Rabi said."

"The humble question is an indispensable tool: the spade that helps us dig for truth, or the flashlight that illuminates surrounding darkness. Questioning helps us learn, explore the unknown, and adapt to change."

"As I wrote in my last column, the traditional skill we have valued in teachers when paper was the dominant media-the ability to transfer knowledge of a subject-is becoming less important. Increasingly, a teacher's knowledge can be found online and in various learning styles. As the internet drives down the value of a teacher's knowledge, their ability to personalize learning with resources from around the world will increase. We will have more data generated about our students as we build out our online communities. We will need teachers who understand how to make meaning of this data to personalize learning for every student from a vast digital library of learning resources. Also, of increasing value is their ability to teach students to be self-disciplined about how "to learn to learn." Rather than losing overall value, teachers will be more important than ever. The big change is not adding technology to the current design of the classroom, but changing the culture of teaching and learning and fundamentally changing the job descriptions of teachers and learners. I offer seven questions we typically ask of teachers in the interview process, along with corresponding questions I think are geared to align with how the internet will force the redefinition of a teacher's added value..."

"Ramsey Musallam's TED Talk on his "3 Rules to Spark Learning" inspires the need to foster students' curiosity. As educators, we want them to ask questions and explore their ideas, which can lead to a rich inquiry-based classroom. From young children whose mantra for everything is "Why?" to teens that require effective inquiry skills as part of their preparation for successful post-secondary life, this need is high. But our challenge is where to begin. Here are four protocols to help jump-start a culture of fostering student inquiry that, in turn, fosters questions and ideas."

"XW1W uses today's instant technologies to share answers to the same question across the world once a week. XW1W is a simple, social way for students to learn about real life in other cultures from real kids all across the world. By simply "hashtagging" Twitter or blog responses to a weekly question about daily life, students can share and learn about other cultures from their international peers."

In the age of information, factual answers are easy to find. Want to know who signed the Declaration of Independence? Google it. Curious about the plot of Nathaniel Hawthorne's famous novel, "The Scarlet Letter"? A quick Internet search will easily jog your memory. But while computers are great at spitting out answers, they aren't very good at asking questions. But luckily, that's where humans can excel.

"A while back, I was asked, "What engages students?" Sure, I could respond, sharing anecdotes about what I believed to be engaging, but I thought it would be so much better to lob that question to my own eighth graders. The responses I received from all 220 of them seemed to fall under 10 categories, representing reoccurring themes that appeared again and again. So, from the mouths of babes, here are my students' answers to the question: "What engages students?" "

"At Harriet Tubman Elementary in Newark, New Jersey, 5th grade teacher Yvonne Copprue-McLeod teaches a lesson about reading comprehension and answering open-ended questions using textual evidence. Ms. Copprue-McLeod's strategy for her lesson is to have students work in groups, using specific details from the text to draw inferences and answer questions about the main character in the text. This lesson is aligned with multiple 5th grade Common Core ELA standards (RL.5.1, RF.5.4, SL.5.1, SL.5.4)."

""We need a really strong, powerful question," he says to a couple dozen fourth graders at John B. Russwurm PS 197, an elementary school in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem. The students, who are scattered cross-legged on the floor of the classroom, eagerly shoot their hands into the air. Mitra calls on a boy in a t-shirt. "Let's hear your question.""

"Did he seriously just ask that? How old is this guy?" Well yes, I recently seriously just asked a group of students if they knew how to search Google. And yes, the students got a good laugh from my question. "Of course I know how to use Google," I have been told by every student to whom I have asked the question. "Really? Let's see. This won't take long," I promise."

"We recently spent a day in a district with a highly experienced and motivated leadership team. They were exploring an interest in a district wide STEAM shift. On the team was a young, newly appointed elementary principal. With the simplicity of a beginner's eye, she asked us to clarify the difference between buy-in and commitment. It gave us reason to pause. We answered in the moment but the question has stayed with us. In educational change efforts, we frequently talk about...and seek...buy-in from our various constituencies. But there is a vast difference between buy-in and commitment. What if we sought commitment instead?"

"Recently, I was looking through my bookshelves and discovered an entire shelf of instruction books that came with software I had previously purchased. Yes, there was a time when software was bought in stores, not downloaded. Upon closer examination of these instruction books, I noticed that many of them were for computers and software that I no longer use or even own. More importantly, most were still in shrink-wrap, never opened. I recalled that when I bought software, I just put the disk into the computer and never looked at the book."

"An excerpt from an important book: 'We have framed some questions which, in our judgment, are responsive to the actual and immediate as against the fancied and future needs of learners in the world as it is (not as it was): What do you worry about most? What are the causes of your worries? Can any of your worries be eliminated? How? Which of them might you deal with first? How do you decide? Are there other people with the same problems? How do you know? How can you find out? If you had an important idea that you wanted to let everyone (in the world) know about, how might you go about letting them know?...'"

"Can creativity be taught? Absolutely. The real question is: "How do we teach it?" In school, instead of crossing subjects and classes, we teach them in a very rigid manner. Very rarely do you witness math and science teachers or English and history teachers collaborating with each other. Sticking in your silo, shell, and expertise is comfortable. Well, it's time to crack that shell. It's time to abolish silos and subjects. Joichi Ito, director of the M.I.T. Media Lab, told me that rather than interdisciplinary education, which merges two or more disciplines, we need anti-disciplinary education, a term coined by Sandy Pentland, head of the lab's Human Dynamics group."

"The Rationale and Overview goes on to state that "Assessment for Learning involves the following key actions: sharing learning intentions; sharing and negotiating success criteria; giving feedback to pupils; effective questioning; and encouraging pupils to assess and evaluate their own and others' work." So where does Angry Birds fit in? Let's breakdown the key actions [above] and compare"

"Teachers who are interested in shifting their classrooms often don't know where to start. It can be overwhelming, frightening, and even discouraging, especially when no one else around you seems to think the system is broken. The question I've been asked often throughout the past year is "Where should a teacher begin?" I've reflected on this a fair amount, and I think small strategic steps are the key."

"There's been a lot of excitement around TED's foray into education, bringing its inspirational video model to the classroom. TED-Ed launched the YouTube Channel with produced and animated videos about two months ago and now includes a free service that lets teachers upload any YouTube video to its polished platform. Teachers can also make any of the videos - TED or any other - more relevant to their classes by adding customized questions and quizzes."

"Culture Teaching Strategies: Science, Math, and Fan Fiction: What's Worth Learning? What happens when you allow kids to figure out their own path to learning by giving them access to the online community? That's one of the thoughtful questions Richard Halverson, co-author of Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology, brings up in this interview at the CYTSE conference."

"I'm currently teaching a STEM/STEAM online course for Powerful Learning Practice with my arts expert buddy of 20 years - Nancy Flanagan. Our task, among other things, is to show how to put the "A" in STEM. We both have points of agreement, points of divergence, and plenty of questions."