Over the past few weeks the topic of questioning has come up many times from various viewpoints. Since I'm not currently teaching, these are more reflections and thoughts than observations from my classroom.
Listening to Dan Meyer's talk really challenged my thinking and reinforced the importance of asking the right questions. With the changes in curriculum, we have moved toward this way of thinking and questioning but it is easy to fall back on the textbook and old ways of doing things. Time is a big factor, but I would like to start incorporating more open middle problems in my classes. Meyer made the point that rarely in life are we given exactly what we need to solve a problem. So why are we doing that for our students?
The answer lies in part in our lack of preparation in leading discussions. We are number people, not word people. We are used to letting the numbers, formulas, and processes do the talking. It's hard to draw the line between asking guiding questions and asking questions that lead to the desired solution. What would it look like to have student questions guide the lesson? What if we let our students discover new topics instead of teaching them? This would be a challenge for me but I'd like to incorporate more of this idea into my classroom.
My project for this class is focused on creating these types of problems or tasks for seventh grade students. So far I've found a lot of great questions and resources. Now my goal is to take them, strip them down to the basics, and re-structure them in a way that forces students to slow down and think through what they know, what they need to know, and how they can accomplish the task. This is my goal...hoping it will work!
Listening to Dan Meyer's talk really challenged my thinking and reinforced the importance of asking the right questions. With the changes in curriculum, we have moved toward this way of thinking and questioning but it is easy to fall back on the textbook and old ways of doing things. Time is a big factor, but I would like to start incorporating more open middle problems in my classes. Meyer made the point that rarely in life are we given exactly what we need to solve a problem. So why are we doing that for our students?
The answer lies in part in our lack of preparation in leading discussions. We are number people, not word people. We are used to letting the numbers, formulas, and processes do the talking. It's hard to draw the line between asking guiding questions and asking questions that lead to the desired solution. What would it look like to have student questions guide the lesson? What if we let our students discover new topics instead of teaching them? This would be a challenge for me but I'd like to incorporate more of this idea into my classroom.
My project for this class is focused on creating these types of problems or tasks for seventh grade students. So far I've found a lot of great questions and resources. Now my goal is to take them, strip them down to the basics, and re-structure them in a way that forces students to slow down and think through what they know, what they need to know, and how they can accomplish the task. This is my goal...hoping it will work!
