Creative Teaching & Learning

Classroom practice: letting students ask questions

What if teachers stopped shouting “Silence in the classroom!” and started letting students ask questions? Jane Smith tried it with her class – and was thrilled with the results.

What if teachers stopped shouting “Silence in the classroom!” and started letting students ask questions? Jane Smith tried it with her class – and was thrilled with the results.

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      string(5777) "67Teaching Thinking&Creativity  Vol 10:1www.teachingtimes.com   Teaching approachesAny questions?What if teachers stopped shouting “Silence in theclassroom!” and started letting students ask questions?Jane Smith tried it with her class – and was thrilled withthe results.What’s the tallest self-supporting structure you can build with newspaper, sellotape and scissors?After spending a fascinating half hour talking to a friend’s four-year-olddaughter, I was reminded how innately curious children are. She was areally bubbly character who wanted to know everything! Why are younot living here? Do you have little girls? How old are you? It was a real barrageof curiosity – totally refreshing and very funny at times. 68Teaching approaches   www.teachingtimes.comTeaching Thinking&Creativity  Vol 10:1It got me wondering – how do we go from being curious,confident, outspoken four year olds to eleven-year-oldswho are happy to sit passively and be told what to do? Theprobing questions from the four year old lacked any form ofguise – she wanted to know so she asked! No worries for herabout getting the question wrong.  She was unconcernedabout looking silly or asking an inappropriate question.She was confident that I was with was as interested in heras she was in me.This made me question my classroom practice. As an AST,I’m fortunate enough to attend many training courses. Afew years ago I attended a course where I learned that 95%of the questions in the classroom come from the teacher.I wanted to test the theory. I decided to use a year 11 classthat I had been teaching for about a year.I asked one of the pupils to observe the lesson andrecord only the questions that were posed by pupils.After an hour of torture, being acutely aware of whathe was doing and knowing that the results were goingto show a real issue, I looked in horror at the questions.Pupils were compliant and pleasant – there were no issuesof discipline.  All the pupils undertook the task I set andno one said anything other than: “Can I go to Matron’sand get a hot water bottle?’ On the surface it seemedlike a productive lesson. But it was clear that the pupilsthought their role was to receive information and werehappy to be passive.I had made this deliberately difficult for myself – I couldhave set up a discussion lesson where I would have hadmore questions from pupils. But it was still a shock to realisethat the culture in my classroom was one where pupils justdid as they were asked. How could I get pupils to think forthemselves and not just accept what they were told at facevalue? There was no way to measure the students’ truelevel of understanding.I began with my Cultural Studies class for 2008 – 2009,where we discussed what makes a philosophical question.We played question games – and I stressed that, in our class,we would never laugh at anyone’s questions.In the first term, we developed ‘ground rules’. Theseweren’t written down, but evolved from our classdiscussions. We have a poster on the wall that says: “Theonly dumb question is the one you don’t ask”. WhenI pointed this out to the class, I was overjoyed whena student, Ashleigh, said: “I don’t get it, what does itmean?”As a class, we had we had already discussed Philosophyfor Children (P4C) questions. We examined ‘Erika’s Story’while reading, ‘The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas’.In the story, Erika’s mother throws her from a cattle truck 69Teaching Thinking&Creativity  Vol 10:1www.teachingtimes.com   Teaching approachesdestined for a concentration camp and she, miraculously,survives. Pupils asked: Was Erika’s mother right to abandonher? Was the woman who looked after her a German? Didit make a difference if the woman was German? How didit feel to be on the train? Do you need to know where youare from? Once the pupils understand that there is no rightor wrong answer and that their emotional reactions arevalued, voicing an opinion is less pressured.When they are still in the early stages of year seven, Pupilsare very keen to join in lessons. Often their questions arespontaneous – spoken without any deliberation. They arekeen to know “why?”. Once the stigma of admitting theydon’t know something has been removed, lessons becomea much louder.When I gave this introductory lesson (below), all 7Opupils in 7O spoke about it in their end of year ‘Assessmentfor Living’ presentation.Yet it needs virtually nopreparation!Introductory lessonResources: Two large piecesof newspaper, one pair ofscissors and one role ofsellotape per group.Task: To build the tallestself-supporting structure,using only the materialsgiven.This activity helped pupilsto overcome their naturalshyness and soon they wereall joining in. Soon they werestanding up, kneeling ontables and firing questionslike: Did you say we couldstick it to the table?  Howlong have we got? Canwe tear the paper? Thiswas a fun lesson wherethe children had to askquestions to progress.Later in the term, twooutside speakers came into lead a session on e-safety.They were alarmed at allthe questions thrown atthem! By Christmas, I waspleased to note how diversethe class’s questions were.Various students asked: Canwe take the next lesson if weprepare it? Shall we researchRemembrance Day and share it with the class? I don’t knowwhat Heil Hitler means, can I go and find out? Can we reallyplan this trip ourselves?I introduced a ‘Mantle of the Expert’ project to furtherchallenge the class. The students were commissioned toproduce resources on"
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Creative Teaching & Learning

Any questions?

22 Nov 2009

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      string(5667) "“To be genuinely thoughtful we must be willing to sustain and protract that state of doubt which is the stimulus to thorough inquiry, so as not to accept an idea or make a positive assertion of a belief until justifying reasons have been found.” (Dewey, 1933:16)No “quick fixes”Once you have refined the focus of your inquiry by translating a ‘hunch’ into a question that is both answerable and manageable, found or devised tools for your inquiry and formed a community inquiry with your partners, you need to make sense of what you are finding.  The extent to which this will be more or less difficult is dependent on how successfully you have negotiated the previous stages but making sense of the outcomes of an inquiry is always a challenge.  It is not unusual to end up with more questions than you started with and as one teacher put it ‘I am confused but at a higher level!’   However, the absence of an easy ‘quick fix’ answer need not be discouraging and the learning that takes place during an inquiry is powerful and rewarding in itself.  Frequently, teachers embark on a series of cycles of inquiry as the review of one ‘plan-do-review’ sequence generates new hunches.  Nevertheless, there is a need to make sense of an inquiry if subsequent actions are to be evidence informed and particularly if you are to be able to share what you are learning with other people.  Messiness and transparencyThe first thing to do is to embrace the ‘messiness’ of inquiring into what is happening in your own classroom, what is valuable about your inquiry is that it is conducted in an authentic setting and this means that it will reflect the fast pace and shifting, multiple variables that are integral to teaching in the real world.  Rigour in teacher research is achieved by ensuring that your account  is transparent so that everyone can know exactly what you did (and didn’t do) and why so that another teacher can express an opinion regarding your decisions and replicate your inquiry in their own context if they so wish.  The best way to ensure transparency and replicability is to focus on the process as well as the outcomes of your inquiry and pose questions to yourself to stimulate recall.Professional learning task: Reflecting on how things wentReflect on an inquiry you have undertaken by considering the following:What went according to plan?What was easier than anticipated?What was more difficult?What had you predicted?What surprised you?What other things would you tell someone, drawing from your experience of how the inquiry went?Letting the data speakBecause your inquiry has been integral to your teaching then you are likely to have generated a lot of different forms of information at different points in time and one of the first steps is to make a table of what you have got.  It can be helpful to organise the table according to the kinds of data (observations; lesson evaluations; student work etc.), details of the participants (who observed, who was observed etc.) and the tools you used (fortune line; student logs etc.) and when you collected information (frequency and dates).  You should also consider if there is any school data available that has been collected for other purposes but which could help in the analysis of the outcomes of your inquiry.  You will be aiming to triangulate the different forms and sources of information as this will help you to draw conclusions and test the robustness of any conclusions you may be reaching.  You will also, inevitably, be triggering a lot of tangential thoughts and you will need to postpone these for the moment as you focus on answering the question you posed at the start of this cycle of inquiry.  The key to success at this stage is to guard against finding what you are looking for and this is where working with other people in a community of inquiry is vital.Professional learning task: Constructing your table of inquiry Consider an inquiry you have or are carrying out.  Using the guidance given in the last paragraph construct a table which sets out: the kind of data gathered; the source of the data; details of participants; and the tools that you used. Using the benefits of collaborationWorking collaboratively with colleagues and research participants is the best way to ensure that your interpretation of the data is reasonable and representative.  There are a variety of ways that you can approach this: you can ask a colleague to watch a short piece of video or read part of an interview transcript, without telling him what your conclusions have been and simply ask him what seems to be interesting or important. 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'How to do it' Guides

How to … make sense of your inquiry

20 May 2019

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      string(5855) "they don’t hit certain parameters within the virtual class – such as not asking enough questions or failing to move around enough – then the children become distracted and visually fade to prompt the user to vary their style of delivery, helping to hone their skills.In addition to physical feedback markers, we also aim to teach more abstract pedagogical skills, such as how best to frame a response to a question from a student, or the importance of moving around the room to engage more fully with the whole class. The fully interactive experience uses aspects of gamification to monitor and assess the user’s performance, helping them hone the skills they need to teach a comprehensive lesson and keep a class’ attention in the process. An example lesson plan:In one of the lesson plans for the Ericsson project, the teachers are tasked with teaching their students about Pascal’s Law. They are given a brief at the start of the experience, which includes their aims. This is an overview of the tasks they have to carry out and the skills they get to practice during the experience. Each choice the teacher makes during the session has variable outcomes that determine how well they do.Lesson aimsToday’s topic is Pascal’s Law. In this session you will:guide students through recall of prior knowledge as you introduce the topicpresent the concept through a brief lecturecheck for understanding of the conceptYou will practice the following pedagogical skills:backward designrecalling prior knowledge and observationindividual workstudent demonstrationpair workYou will have opportunities to engage your students in ICT-integrated activities, including:Google image searchYouTube videocollaborative learning platform Teaching activities Once you have introduced the topic, you will spend the remainder of your class guiding the students through activities to help them more fully grasp the concept and practice using the formula.Choose two activities from among the four below. When choosing your activities, consider activities that:offer a mix of pedagogiesinclude ICT- and non-ICT-integrated methodsare in an order that you think will most effectively build students’ understandingYou will receive feedback on your choices at the end of the module.Choose from: Ask 2 different students to 1) organise a formula and 2) solve the equation in front of class. Have students research examples of machines that use hydraulics by doing a Google image search, and share findings with class.Send students a multiple choice question set via the learning app and ask them to work on it and send their answers through the app when they’re done.Ask a student to come and show how to solve a practice question on the board.Interaction pointsThroughout the lesson, you will have points where you can interact with students. These include:asking a student a question inviting a student to write on the boardcomplete a task using learning appask students to complete task in pairs In addition, the dynamic feedback mechanism built into the experience will cause students to ask questions if it gauges that teachers are not engaging students as well as they could be.Feedback At the end, the programme generates feedback on their teaching activities and on individual aspects of their class management, from the tone of their voice to the accuracy of setting time limits, based on the choices the teacher made throughout. The teacher can then repeat the experience if they so wish – with different variables and options available for them to experiment with, helping them to improve. Less pressure, more progressFor teachers in developing countries, this is a way to train without access to the resources we have here in the UK – but these are skills that any new teacher can benefit from practising before they face the pressure of a real class. The global teaching community TES offers a handful of key tips on what makes a good teacher, including: knowledge of subject matter, classroom skills, planning skills, adaptability and communication skills. Often, these are skills that take time to build up as teachers gain more experience in the classroom. This is where a virtual simulator can come in really handy – by giving new and training teachers the confidence and initial experience of facing a class in a low-pressure, risk-free environment. For example, a training tool with similar functionality to that of the Ericsson Virtual Classroom can help a new teacher experiment with, and improve, their body language – helping them find the delivery style that best suits them and their class, making them a more open and more confident educator. In the same way, it can help teachers prepare for the unpredictability of the classroom. No class is the same two days running and, while no digital application can replicate the true unpredictability of human nature quite so well as a real class, a virtual classroom can nonetheless help teachers get used to dealing with surprising situations such as student injuries or badly behaved pupils, which require quick thinking and flexibility. What’s more, it allows teachers to learn quick and adaptive thinking without the risk of alienating a class of real students who might lose respect for their teacher – while giving the teacher some of the confidence and skills they will need when faced with a real-life situation. Such a training tool does not have to be limited to new or training teachers. Even those with years of experience in front of a real class could"
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Leadership

Upping the Ante on Teacher Training: The Virtual Classroom That’s Just for Teachers

13 Nov 2018

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      string(5927) "class, we made ourselves the authority of chemistry and maths knowledge. In chemistry, Roger would provide his students practice problems, and the next day would show them an answer key and have them ask questions. Students were able to assess their understanding with this method, but all conversations were student-to-teacher interactions, and the teacher was an integral part to their understanding. In Cultures of Thinking, the goal of the teacher is to find ways, ‘…to step back so that students can step forward’.6 To support student autonomy, Roger changed the ways that students interact with practice problems through the ‘Explainer / Explorer’ method of problem review. Each group of students (usually 2-4 students) are assigned a problem to become experts on. Students solve the problem on a whiteboard and discuss it among their group. After students have completed their problem, each group member is randomly assigned the role of ‘explainer’ or ‘explorer’. The role of ‘explorer’ is to visit other groups and be responsible for asking questions of at least two other groups, while the ‘explainer’ remains at their table and answers questions asked. After a set amount of time, students switch roles. With this method, students have conversations in a smaller setting, which I have found increases the conversation between students. With this method, the authority of knowledge is placed in the hands of the students, yet is still debatable. Through this practice of students answering each other’s questions they internalise knowledge using resources in addition to the teacher to aid their understanding. In maths, Jeff set used to set his classroom up so that he was the only mathematician in the room. The answers, notes and hard problems all went through him, and apps or solution guides were something to be hidden away and given only in rare circumstances. Now, he continually presses students to be mathematicians and to use many resources – ‘read the textbook – the mathematician who wrote that book has a good example on division’, ‘watch this video on polynomials’, ‘use the “Photo Math” app to check that answer and see what that provides’ – to build their understanding. In our maths and chemistry classrooms in the past, the amount of peer-to-peer interaction was very limited, and when things got loud, we felt like we were losing control. We were sometimes afraid that if somebody walked by they would think that learning was not happening. Now, while promoting student autonomy in the classroom, the volume may increase, but so does the understanding and rich interactions.But, how do we ensure students are learning the information without misconceptions if they are autonomous learners?Student autonomy does not mean that students have no interactions with the teacher. If a teacher notices an issue in a problem, addressing it (preferably with a question), is beneficial for student understanding. If students view the teacher as a resource rather than the resource for learning, they will still remain autonomous.While students are in the ‘explaining’ and ‘exploring’ phase, the teacher can join conversations passively by listening, or actively by contributing thoughts. Being part of a conversation is another way to address misconceptions. While jumping from conversation to conversation, you can also check for on-topic conversations.Having misconceptions about maths or chemistry is not something to fear – it means that learning is happening. The idea is to give the students enough supports to rectify these misconceptions or misunderstandings – that is what learning (vs. knowledge) is supposed to ‘look like’. Beyond QREAnother way to foster rich interactions is to move beyond the QRE pattern of discourse present in many classrooms (teacher Questions, students Respond, teacher Evaluates). In a lesson on solving systems of linear equations, Jeff used to show the students a system and would ask them how to solve it using a certain method. A few students would raise their hands, and he would call on them to move things along and to save time. They would tell him the way to perform the operation and Jeff would write as they would talk. The rest of the class would vigorously write down everything he was doing on the board and then he would consider it as ‘taught’. This is a classic QRE situation. The interaction would only exist between the teacher and the student providing the information. As Ritchhart says, this is ‘resembling a Ping-Pong match back and forth between the teacher and a single student, leaving much of the class out of the interaction’.7 If a student asked a question along the way, Jeff would answer it for that student, and again the interaction would only exist between him and that student. What the classroom needed was different patterns of interaction, so instead of Ping-Pong, perhaps basketball would be a better metaphor. Jeff decided instead to try the ‘+1 routine’ as a new pattern of interaction. He gave them these directions, pausing after each step to give them time to think and reflect:Write for two minutes about solving systems of equations.Now pass your papers clockwise. Read the list. Add one new thing about systems that you don’t see on the paper.Keep passing clockwise and repeat until the paper reaches the original owner.Then he continued, ‘Now, take a few minutes and talk with each other and compare your lists. What’s different? What is the same?’ The groups of students then"
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Creative Teaching & Learning

Transferring Ownership of Learning

8 Jan 2019

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