Get to the Point: It's all about the Questions
One of the simplest ways to dive deeper in to the Common Core is to examine how we question students. Take a look at your lesson. Do you have the questions you are going to ask, whether that be verbally or in an assignment, pre-planned and thoughtfully organized? Chances are, if you are like most teachers, you come up with questions on the fly as you move through your lesson plan. While these might serve the purpose at the time, you'll get more bang for your buck if you script these questions PRIOR to the lesson so you have a clear direction and purpose. It's hard to know how deep you're going if you don't know where you're headed from the start.
"Every teacher needs to improve, not because they are not good enough, but because they can be even better."
Ways to get there:
- Check out this article about student-centered learning for our socratic seminar.
- Now learn about how to use socratic seminars in your classroom.
- A great basic guide to using socratic seminars with students.
- RAFT Writing is a great, quick way to get kids writing...in ALL content areas. Here's a SIMPLE explanation.
- Straight-forward site with guidelines to follow when developing questions for students
- Questioning isn't just a job for the teacher. Check out these tips for making answering questions an ACTIVE activity.
- Aptly named, the Questioning Toolkit breaks down the types of questions and provides tool to achieve them.
- Want students to hang on your every word? Try: Engaging Students Through Effective Questioning.
- This wouldn't be a resource list without a Pinterest page. Try Higher-Order Thinking Skills for all your pinning needs.