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Questioning – Top Ten Strategies

Questioning – Top Ten Strategies
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning.” – Albert Einstein Questioning is the very cornerstone of philosophy and education, ever since Socrates ( in our Western tradition) decided to annoy pretty much everyone by critiquing and harrying people with questions – it has been central to our development of thinking and our capacity to learn. Indeed, it is so integral to all that we do that it is often overlooked when developing pedagogy – but it as crucial to teaching as air is to breathing. We must ask: do we need to give questioning the thought and planning time something so essential to learning obviously deserves? Most research indicates that as much as 80% of classroom questioning is based on low order, factual recall questions. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Q1. I like to exemplify the probing nature of Socratic questioning with the attack dog of relentless questions – Jeremy Paxman – and his logical stripping down of Michael Howard! 6.

Peer marking and how to make it work in your classroom - TES English - Blog - TES English English and media teacher Ms Findlater explains the process of introducing peer marking to her pupils. Effective marking is essential. So, too, are time-saving strategies. How can we juggle the two? We want it done well but we can't, and shouldn’t, undertake detailed marking on every piece of work a student produces. So, how about a strategy that both reduces the mark load and enables students to take charge of their own learning? As a new teacher, I remember ‘doing’ peer marking with a year 9 class a few times. This would, indeed, have been the case at that time. Don't dumb it down Prior to the peer marking task being completed by the students, a copy of the success criteria/mark scheme is shared with them, the same one that I’m expected to use. Show me the skills Students highlight three key words at every level that helps them remember what they’re being asked to assess. Moving on up The students underline the word that describes the level of difficulty within each grade description.

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Guide to Developing Good Questions | Steve Mouldey This question development guide was one first developed in a previous school which I have updated recently. The Word version of this is formatted nicely but this gives a good idea of how it works: Brainstorm of your early ideas Questions/topics/areas/issues related to theme that you may be interested in developing further Relevance of your topic What big ideas and/or concepts will I learn about from doing this topic? How do my ideas for an inquiry so far relate to what we have been doing in class? Developing good inquiry questions There are two main types of questions: Questions which require you to simply gather information.Questions which require you to make a reasoned judgement about information. Here are some examples of the two types of question: Now that you have brainstormed some ideas, what is your final choice of a topic? What is the inquiry question you will use to explore this topic? To ensure you have a powerful inquiry question, use the following criteria: Yes (continue) No (continue)

My account Sign in to continue to Skype No account? Create one! Sign-in options Terms of use Privacy & cookies ... John Sayers Geography Blog: Questioning The start of a new term is nearly upon us and I am going in revitalised due to a number of life changes. One aspect of getting back into the classroom and school environment is to listen to the great array of questions, challenges and responses I'll hear and be involved in. I love questioning and the potential depth to thinking it can generate. However far to often including in my own practice I prevent opportunities for taking the thinking deeper by posing a new challenge, problem to keep that engaging thrust of something new flowing in the room. So how about a strategy. I've provided a series of pictures of a set of cards my school has provided that help provide a starting point for each of the stages of Socratic questioning so that the metaphorical ball can start rolling and as in a rolling snowball down a snow filled slope the momentum building and the ball - thinking expanding:) So what are the question Socratic circle questioning poses? It is a 6 step process:

Webtool A Week | But Does It Help Students Learn? You can find a Symbaloo webmix of all the tools featured on the blog here. Feel free to share… Week 39: Google Whilst the way Google operate is not to everyone’s liking their products have begun to change the way many schools operate. 20 million students worldwide are using Google Apps according to Jeff Dunn in his article about going Google. From the now commonplace Google Docs for collaboration in the classroom, Forms for surveys, Chat for quick discussions to the less well known tools such as searching by reading level, Google has an increasing range of tools to help the teacher and student alike. There are an increasing number of Chrome extensions (tools that live inside of your Chrome Browser and provide additional functionality by connecting to other web utilities), 12 of which are discussed in this Edudemic article. If Android apps become available through a browser (a Chrome coloured Android robot has been spotted at Google HQ) then the popularity of Chromebooks would rocket.

Teaching and Learning Bulletin This great idea comes from Sarah Kahan, Head of MFL at Elthorne Park. Firstly the teacher marks a piece of work with highlighters for different aspects of the agreed success criteria. For example, in MFL, it might be connectives, specific vocabulary, use of different tenses etc. Admittedly, this can take a while but the hope is that effective modelling of this way of assessing work will lead to students being able to critique their own work or that of their peers using the same method. Then students get their work back, look at the different highlighting, complete corrections and see what they needed to have done to improve their work. To close the gap, the teacher then identifies particular students who exemplify excellent work of a particular aspect of the criteria and they become the designated teachers for the lesson. The students are put into groups according to their target for improvement and the peer ‘teacher’ leads the learning.

Narrowing the gap: Pupil Premium and CPD | Teacher Development Trust This blog follows my talk given at the Westminster Briefing ‘Narrowing the Gap’ event in Leeds on Thursday 27th June, 2013. I will be delivering a similar talk at the Westminster Briefing London event on Tuesday 9th July. When narrowing the attainment gap, Sutton Trust research highlights why we should be focusing on the quality of teaching: We can see that the average student makes significantly greater progress as we improve the quality of teaching, but that this effect is magnified for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, for school leaders to simply take this as grounds to be increasingly prescriptive about how their teachers should be delivering lessons would be a mistake, as research from Viviane Robinson shows us: This research clearly shows that the most important role that a school leader can play is to be a leader of teacher learning and development. But where should teachers be focusing their efforts when engaging in professional devleopment? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Learning Phases: Putting your OARR in | Teaching + How can we plan our lessons to ensure students understand concepts and retain knowledge more effectively? How can we prevent our learning objectives from falling on deaf ears? How can we effectively build objectives into the DNA of the lesson? Putting OARR (Objective, Activity, Review, Repeat) into each lesson can help. So how does OARR work? The idea is based on Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve – which reflects on the need to review to build in knowledge retention and deeper understanding. Hattie’s notion of spaced learning also builds on this very idea. Like this: Like Loading...

8 Great Videos About the Flipped Classroom Following is a selection of eight videos that discuss the flipped classroom and why it makes so much sense. Learn how the flip enables teachers to truly personalize the classroom and differentiate learning. Discover how flipping the classroom can go hand in hand with mastery learning. Take a deeper dive into flipped instruction and questions that many teachers raise when they first learn about it, in a flipped class panel discussion. 1. 8th grade math and Algebra 1 teacher Katie provides an excellent explanation of why she flipped her classroom in this 3 and a half minute video. 2. This video is from one of the leading proponents of the flipped classroom. 3. This video from “mathjohnson” clears up misconceptions about the flip by explaining a lot of what the flip classroom isn't (which interestingly gives a lot of perspective on what the flipped classroom is). 4. The Flipped Classroom Workshop in a Book by Kelly Walsh, available now! 5. 6. 7. 8.

Part Five: How do you develop a strong learning culture amongst staff? | teachertweaks So the results are in: the teachers have spoken! In the last post, I was eagerly awaiting teachers’ votes for the different options to develop our learning culture. We have 68 teachers at my school and 52 of them voted. Terrence Deal and Kent Peterson, in Shaping School Culture: the heart of leadership state: Every organisation has a culture, that history and underlying set of unwritten expectations that shape everything about the school. Presently, it is difficult for me to define our school culture. So what kind of teachers do we want to be? Making a change: listening to teachers’ concerns The most common feedback I received from staff when they were viewing the taster videos was: ‘I think that’s a great idea but I don’t know where I’m going to get the time to get involved.’ Time for an anecdote. - Plan large-scale change but don’t change everything at once Next steps: implementing the change

5 Minute Marking Plan by @TeacherToolkit and @LeadingLearner | Leading Learner Marking is an occupational hazard for all teachers. Whilst the “5 Minute Marking Plan” can’t do your marking for you (sadly) it will help you focus on the job in hand and help ensure you maximise your students’ learning and your own. This planner adds to a growing number of 5 Minute Plans produced by @TeacherToolkit including the “5 Minute Lesson Plan” and the “5 Minute Assembly Plan” which are available on @TeacherToolkit’s website. The thinking that underpins the plan seeks to highlight those elements of marking that have greatest impact on learning, namely: Sharing the key marking points (you may refer to these as success criteria). The time spent on marking students’ work must also help you identify common errors, so you can: Require students to correct and improve their workRe-teach elements of the lesson, scheme of work, programme of study or syllabus to help close key gaps in students’ knowledge, understanding or skillsInform future teaching programmes The big picture? Like this:

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