Asking Good Questions to Get Great Answers

Posted on by Debbie Parker

Have you ever graded an assessment and wondered or complained how is it possible that after all of your instruction, “How could the students still score poorly and not know the answers?!”  I don’t have the solution, but I do know where to place the central piece of this puzzle:  Teachers asking the right questions in the first place.

We have to ask deep open-ended questions.  Classroom kids — no matter what age — easily give up because they know that within seconds, a strong lead will be received, so why try!

Inquiry is the basis of everything we teachers do.  Think about the puzzle of teaching:  If we don’t ask, the students don’t reflect and the information — or pieces in this case — is just layed on the desk with no were to go.

When I visit classrooms, whether it is as a teacher coach to give feedback or as a department chair for evaluations and feedback, teachers too often lead students down the trail.  Kids aren’t linking related pieces together.

During a recent discussion with my assistant principal about my next coaching cycle, we talked about conferencing, reviewing, and student check-ins. Each of these are coaching rotations on their own and all relate to asking questions.  We need to know which puzzle pieces our students know and which they can’t fit together.  The only way for us to do that is through questioning.  Of course if we lead too much, then kids don’t have to work at finding the right location of that puzzle piece; we do it for them.  The students have to be asked the right questions!

We agreed that waiting until next fall wasn’t advantageous for coaching about questioning.  Hopefully teachers would begin trying these questions now and have a firmer grip on them when the new school year begins in September.

Therefore, I recently coached our 7th and 8th grade teachers and will do so later this month with the 6th grade math, science, social studies, and English teachers. Thanks to the New Fairfield 8th grade teachers, some additional modifications were made so that the questions are even more relevant for math, science, and social studies.  A modified presentation was given to music, world language, art, and health teachers.

The questions in this slide show are meant to move students forward. I hope they’ll help you too.  At the request of the teachers, I made mini posters for teachers to hang on their walls to help remind them to ask these deeper questions. Asking Good Questions to Get Great Answers_ Mini posters  Asking Good Questions to Get Great Answers  

What do you have to lose except increased understanding with students putting more pieces together when you try these questions!

Thanks to two wonderful gurus of conferencing: Carl Anderson and Penny Kittle for their ideas.  And also to Lisa Chesser who I found to also be a source of deep questions.

 

Conferencing with Writers

Posted on by Debbie Parker

Nanci Atwell:  The middle school guru who was one of many to revolutionize writing for 6th, 7th, and 8th graders.  I  first learned about writing conferences after reading her book, IN THE MIDDLE.  Her concepts sold me on what was possible with students. The teacher meeting with students to talk about what they were writing, how their writing was going, the pitfalls, the high notes, and the struggles. Wow!  Where could the text be improved as well as what were the strengths?  Was the writing ready to be polished?  Was the voice, tone, and word choice appropriate to the audience? All of this occurred over multiple conversations between the adult and child. I kept thinking if only I had had these opportunities as a student, perhaps I would have been a better student writer!

At the time, I was teaching part-time with adults and teens working toward their GEDs.  Obviously these were not the pre-teens Atwell referenced in her book, but when applied to my own students, the conferencing still worked.  More importantly, it positively impacted my student’s learning!

When I moved to the middle school classroom a few years later, I eagerly applied more of Atwell’s techniques; her book was my “bible”.  It served me well!  The most important puzzle piece that I used from Atwell continued to be the student-teacher conference.

The beauty of conferencing that so many teachers don’t understand — and is now part of my job as a coach — is that the teacher gets to know who their students are.  Writing is a powerful tool; that is a pretty well-known fact.  Students can be verbally shy but willing to write.  However, sometimes getting to know them comes from what you  pry out of them in order to help improve their writing. Each student deals with writing differently.  Writing is a puzzle to many students, but conferencing helps them start to see where the pieces fit together.  For some it takes longer than others; after all, everyone can see the puzzle come together at different rates and in different ways.

I’ve seen teachers silently write notes/comments in a student’s documents without any student interaction and call it conferencing.  Objection!  There has to be a conversation, and these discussions cannot be one-sided or the teacher is not facilitating; he or she is dictating.  The entire point of conferencing has been lost if that is the case.  Everyone has their piece in the puzzle — both student and teacher.

At first I tried to help my writers repair every part of their writing:  Editing and revising.  What a mistake!  A student meeting with me would last for 30 minutes — that didn’t work too well with 25-30 students in a class.  After more research about writing workshop where conferencing is paramount, and reading from experts such as Ralph Fletcher, Jim Burke, Laura Robb, and the other middle school guru Kylene Beers, I learned to fine-tune my facilitating and have students take more responsibility for their work.

In some ways this can feel as if the puzzle pieces are upside down.  Students have come to expect that teachers will provide answers; many kids are not thinking for themselves.  They can’t put those puzzle pieces together:  Not because they are unskilled, but because they are used to parents, relatives, coaches, siblings and teachers, telling them where each piece fits.

My students now chose what 1 or 2 elements they want to talk about based on the rubric.  This was a big change both for the students and for me. Focusing in on a few things in our conference, though and getting them correct, helped those skills follow through to the next writing.  DEPTH NOT BREADTH:  This is the center piece to the conferencing puzzle.

So, here is my writing workshop puzzle amended from the writers named above and many others.  It works for me, and I’ve seen it work in similar ways for my team teachers.

  1. Introducing the writing task based on the literature and have students explain it
  2. Providing a clear rubric that is written so students understand it and can explain it — better yet have the students create the rubric
  3. Planning in some form which works best for each individual student
  4. Teacher tracking — spreadsheets works best for me — where each student is in the writing process
  5. Conferencing
  6. Drafting
  7. Tracking the process
  8. Conferencing
  9. Drafting
  10. Peer conferencing
  11. Tracking
  12. Conferencing
  13. Drafting

Do you see a pattern to the puzzle?

Without a doubt, conferencing takes time, management — for the teacher and the students, patience — for the teacher and the students, the willingness to release control to students, and planning.  It’s messy. But the outcomes are worth it.

 

 

From Classroom to Coaching

Posted on by Debbie Parker

Since I last published here, my positions have radically changed.  I taught another year of grade 7 to an amazing group of students with whom I am still in touch.  It is SO gratifying, and a teacher knows she has made an impact when students choose to come visit.

A position opened in my middle school in the spring of 2015:  Literacy Coach.  I had coached teachers a couple of years before for 30% of my time while teaching a push-in literacy class with struggling 7th and 8th grade readers. The position had been a collaboration with another teacher who also cared deeply about helping students learn to read. That had been a great program, but this time, I wanted something deeper and different.  I was ready for more in my career.  There were more pieces to add to my personal puzzle.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved teaching in the classroom; it was the best part of my 44 years of working in a wide variety of jobs and careers.  But I was ready for change.  No matter how many committees I am involved with and how many new strategies I try, at some point, a person needs a change to stay at the top of their game and to feel fulfilled.  It is my strong belief that this is an issue in the teaching profession:  Once people lose interest for their day-to-day job, they need to leave.

I had not lost my passion, but I needed renewal and revival.  Perusing the literacy coach job description, I realized that the position was different in this posting than in the past: No push in, there would be teaching classes, and more coaching.  After talking with the assistant principal, I found she was looking to redefine the position; it didn’t take me long to submit my letter of intent.

The position was not mine immediately:  I was up against a strong contender whom I respect.  We discussed the job, and I encouraged him to apply.  I knew I could work well with him if he became the coach. We look at many educational issues in similar ways.  His classroom energy, ability to engage kids, and co-teaching collaboration are some of what I admire.  It’s a story for another time, but I now call on him to coach new teachers.

Ultimately, I did get the literacy coach position and immediately the questions flowed about my new endeavor:  How to engage struggling readers so they don’t feel bad about themselves and are willing to improve their skills?  How to encourage non-readers to open themselves up to becoming readers even in some small way?  How to get buy in from my colleagues that I can help them in their classrooms?  How do I know what they need help with?

The puzzle pieces were scattering around me, but I didn’t have enough of them yet to put it all together in my new classroom.