Classroom dynamics a teacher s handbook Glen Pearsall press
contents Chapter one: strategic questioning....10 Chapter two: effective feedback.... 22 Chapter three: encouraging critical thinking....36 Chapter four: changing classroom dynamics.... 50 Index..................................................... 72 references............................................. 73 8 Classroom Dynamics Glen Pearsall 9
Strategic Questioning Strategy One The Top Ten The Top 10 Strategic Questioning techniques 1. Cold Calling Sometimes referred to as the No hands up rule, cold calling is asking students a question without waiting for them to indicate whether or not they have the answer. 2. Inverted Questions Framing your questions with a statement of fact and then asking why or how is this the case, as opposed to asking a closed question to discover that fact. 3. Wait time/pause time The two kinds of teacher wait time. The first type is when you wait after a question to give students an appropriate amount of time to think of an answer. The second being when you pause after they give the answer to encourage them to add greater depth and detail to their response. It takes a lot of hard work to make teaching seem effortless. Asking questions for instance, is central to everyday teaching practice. However, what teachers can achieve in discussion with their classes can vary widely. For teachers starting out, just conducting a teacher-centred class discussion in which they quiz their student s knowledge of a topic can be very challenging. By contrast expert teachers learn the techniques for turning class discussion into a complex exploration of ideas in which students take an active and engaged role, often answering and asking questions of each other as much as responding to the teacher. These strategic questioning techniques are the by-product of years of trial and error. Many teaching techniques are used so frequently in the everyday work of accomplished classes that they become automatic. In fact, so innate do these techniques become to the way they teach that some expert teachers find it difficult to articulate precisely what these techniques are and how they are using them. In this chapter we focus on identifying strategic questioning techniques and labeling them allowing us to understand and emulate what good teachers are doing from minute to minute in their classroom. 4. elboration cues Questions designed to guide students towards more detailed and thoughtful answers. 5. No Glossing Rule Waiting for students to give you the complete answer, rather than accepting a partial response and filling in the rest yourself. 6. Question relay When a student wants to shrug off a question with a lazy I don t know, you can ask them to listen to two other responses and determine which is the best response. 7. Exampling Asking a students who has answered a question correctly or one of their classmates to provide examples to support the response 8. Second Draft Asking the class to rephrase a correct answer for the sake of clarity and precision. 9. the golden question Asking students to provide evidence to support their interpretation. 10. Rich Questions A rich question is a high order question that requires students to evaluate, synthesise or explore their knowledge in a deeper way. Rich questions can be used to stimulate inquiry, seek comparisons and identify complexities within a topic. 10 Classroom Dynamics Strategic Questioning Glen Pearsall 11
1. Cold Calling Sometimes referred to as the No hands up rule, cold calling is asking students a question without waiting for them to indicate whether or not they have the answer. Typically this involves posing a question to the class and instead of waiting for an individual to offer the correct answer, you identify a student to venture a response. Who can tell me what a prime number is? (Cold Calling): What is a prime number? John? Sometimes teachers are reluctant to ask questions this way because they feel it may expose students who don t have an answer. However, cold calling is specifically designed to address the stigma associated with wrong answers. By making these incorrect answers routine, cold calling shows students that making mistakes or not knowing is simply a routine step on the way to understanding. Being wrong is not the opposite of being right but half-way to being right. Cold Calling s question and answer protocol encourages students to more fully participate in class discussion. It fosters a culture where it becomes routine for students to indicate the extent of their understanding, rather than only be involved when they have a solution. There is good evidence to suggest that only about a quarter of students regularly answer questions in class (Wiliams & Black 1998) and this simple change ensures those who don t will take more active roles in class discussion. 2. Inverted Questions This style of question involves presenting students with an answer and then asking them why it is correct. The great advantage of this technique is that allows you to formulate complex, high-order questions on the spot. By simply inverting a traditional closed question so that the answer is included in the prompt, and then asking why this is correct, the teacher can create a much richer question. Traditional Closed Question Teacher: Is the 3 the numerator in the fraction 3/4? Student: Yes. Inverted Question Teacher: The 3 is the numerator in this fraction. Why? Student: The 3 is the numerator because it tells us that there are three equal parts in the whole number. You can see from this example that the teacher was easily able to convert the foundation question into a much higher order inquiry. The obvious strength of this technique is not just that teachers can formulate these questions more quickly but that students produce more sophisticated answers; ones that help other students understand how to come to an answer. 12 Classroom Dynamics Strategic Questioning Glen Pearsall 13
3. Wait Time/Pause time The object of Wait Time is simple enough: To ensure you wait long enough after you ask a question or a student answers to get the most out of a student s response. This is best addressed by separating the strategy into two stages. Wait Time The first wait time strategy is to consciously lengthen the pause after you ask a question in which students are given time to think of an answer. Pause Time The second type of wait time occurs after a student has responded to the question. Consciously pausing at this point often creates room for the student to add detail or a qualifying statement to their answer. Research shows that teachers on average wait less than one second before they presume students don t have an answer and continue the discussion themselves (Rowe 1987). Teachers wait even less time after a student response to jump in and tell them whether they are right or wrong. (The average for teachers in one survey actually rounds down to zero seconds.) Raising the average wait time up to as little as 3 to 5 seconds can have a very substantial impact on your class. Rowe (1987) has suggested that as a result of this change: The number of students who take part in class conversation will rise The detail and depth of responses are likely to increase Less students will resort to using I don t know as an answer Student answers are more likely to sight evidence to support their response Practice Wait Time/pause time Initially, it can be difficult to ensure you use wait time effectively but there are some effective techniques for ensuring that you wait long enough. Examples of this are Stop n Prop, Many Hands Up and 90 second countdown. Stop n Prop After asking a question it is important to signal to students that you don t require an answer immediately. One way of doing this is to ask your question and then immediately walk to another part of the room. Pause here (stop n prop) for a few seconds meeting the eye with as many of the group as possible, and then walk to another part of the room. The object here is to make students feel less under scrutiny. Repeating this process several times reduces the expectation on students to produce instant answers and reminds you to give students extended thinking time. Many Hands Up Another technique for ensuring proper wait time is the Many Hands Up convention. Students are told that whenever you ask a question in class you will wait until most hands are up before nominating a student to answer. In this way it becomes routine for students to think for an extended period before having to discuss their answers. (If after a protracted time of 30 seconds or so and only a couple of students have raised a hand, then you might need to rephrase the question because it may not be targeted carefully enough to student ability.) In lower primary classes, many teachers use a variation of this when students who know the answer are asked to hug themselves. This avoids the common problem of students who have yet to learn how to contain their enthusiasm from calling out before others have had a chance to properly think about the question. 90 Second Countdown One engaging way to assess how you use wait time in a classroom is to try a 90 second Countdown. In this activity you use a stopwatch or a timer on your phone to try and wait for a cumulative 90 seconds of wait time during a class discussion. Each time you pause after a question or a student answer you start the timer, stopping it again when you resume speaking. 90 seconds of wait time is a relatively small amount but given that teachers on average ask between 45 and 50 questions in a half hour class discussion and only average about one second of pause time, this can be quite a challenging activity. If you are particularly adventurous you might ask a colleague or student to time you. 14 Classroom Dynamics Strategic Questioning Glen Pearsall Classroom Dynamics 15
4. elaboration cues i) Placeholder Statements Another strategy for making the most of student thinking time is to use so called Placeholder Statements. These are short, neutral phrases teachers use to ensure that they are not passing immediate judgment on a student answer. There is a tendency amongst many teachers, even those who are conscious of wait time to conclude student statements with a quick evaluative response. A Placeholder Statement need not indicate whether a statement is right or wrong but simply encourages students to keep talking and exploring their idea. Ian Smith (2007), who labels these phrases minimal encouragers, offers these examples as effective: Go on And? So? Oh? ii) Reflective Statements Alternatively you might use reflective listening to indicate that you understand a student s response but still leave them room to qualify or add detail to their answer. This is simply a matter of restating the student s response in a way that indicates your understanding of their viewpoint. So you are arguing that It seems that you feel So what you are saying is You think we should view it as iii) Blank Prompts Another good technique for encouraging student responses is to frame your responses as though you were unsure of an answer. This signals to students that they are chiefly responsibility for developing a response to the question. This is largely communicated through tone but some teachers go as far as actually suggesting an incorrect or simplistic answer in the form of a question: So what is the next step, again? So the poet s only use of form is rhyme? Is that right? 5. No Glossing Rule Another technique is to look for what Doug Lemov (2010) has called the hundred percent answer. That is making sure that a student fully answers the question put to them and not fall into the trap of filling in a partial or incomplete answer yourself. Teacher: Where did another revolution take place? Student: P something, that French city Teacher: Yes, that s right, Paris. Now are there other places in the world where revolutions have taken place? Research shows that students routinely respond to questions at a different cognitive level than the teacher and that teachers generally accept these answers as sufficient without probing or prompting correct responses (Ornstein 1988). Having a No Glossing Rule means that you have to properly explore the accuracy of student responses and research has shown that this investigation actually improves the quality of your student s answers. 6. Question relay It can be frustrating when cold calling students for an answer, if their knee-jerk response is an unthinking I don t know. Question relay is an effective technique for ensuring that students don t dodge questions in this way. In this technique when a student tells you that they can t come up with an answer, you don t simply move on to another person. Instead you tell them to listen carefully to the next two responses as you will be returning to them in a moment. After listening to these answers, you then ask the student to judge which of these answers was most satisfactory. Teacher: What are some of the health problems associated with smoking, Li? Li: I don t know Teacher: Ok, listen carefully to the next two answers. I m going to come back to you to ask you which of them you think is the most accurate. 7. Exampling Sometimes students will give you the correct answer but only understand the question in its narrowest sense. Exampling is a technique that teachers employ when they have already secured a correct answer but want to confirm that students have fully understood the process for coming up with that answer. This can be used in two ways. Firstly a teacher will ask a student for another example to back up their initial response. Anil, can you think of another occasion when that sort of protest led to a revolution? Alternatively a teacher might ask the class group for another example to support the initial response. Can anyone else think of an example to back up Anil s answer? 16 Classroom Dynamics Strategic Questioning Glen Pearsall 17
8. Second Draft A helpful strategy for testing student understanding is the second draft technique. After getting a successful response from a student, you ask other class members to refine that answer. You might ask them to use more formal language or more precise terms or get them to phrase it in a more fluent or concise fashion. The important point here is that they are evaluating the quality of class responses. Teacher: How would you best describe this group of elements? Student: Xenon and Neon are part of that group of special gases that don t react to stuff Teacher: Can someone come up with a second draft of that response, Aaron? Student: Xenon and Neon are part of the family of inert gases that are non-reactive. 9. the golden question What makes you say that? The best classroom discussion seeks student interpretation, rather than just recall, and also justification. Developed as a thinking routine as part of Project Zero, this simple question formulation encourages students to provide evidence to support their interpretation. Used frequently in class it gets students into the habit of evidentiary reasoning and helps them understand alternatives and multiple perspectives. Easy to remember, flexible to employ and habit forming for students, the golden question is a classic default question for teachers running whole group discussion. Source: http://www.pz.harvard.edu/vt/visiblethinking_html_files 10. Rich Questions In class discussions, teachers ask two to three questions a minute, these questions are often of a low order, requiring simple recall or a listing of facts. A rich question is a high order question that requires students to evaluate, synthesise or explore their knowledge in a deeper way. Rich questions can be used to stimulate inquiry, seek comparisons and identify complexities within a topic. How is this similar to the other example we looked at? What would happen if? How would you explain this to another student? In what ways is this situation different though? Rich questions are also useful for addressing incorrect responses. In his pocket book Assessment and Learning, Ian Smith (2007) gives a range of examples for teasing out the thinking behind wrong answers. What do you think? Why do you think that? Can you be sure? Is there another way? Do you have a reason? How do you know? 18 Classroom Dynamics Strategic Questioning Glen Pearsall 19