Learning: Search the Twitter hashtag #21daysSDW

sbrownehr.com

Feedback is a focus during our next #21daysSDW and so is conferring. What if you changed your feedback loop to include your learners? Have you asked them what they think? Have you asked them to make their thinking visible through writing, discussion, questioning, or the ever so familiar emoticons?

In the book, Make One Change, Dan Rothstein argues that we should be teaching the skill of question formulation to all students. We should do it to promote excellence and we should do it to promote equity.
Both are achievable.

Learning how to ask questions leads to improved learning outcomes, greater student engagement, and more ownership of the learning process. This book asks us to make one simple change in our regular, purposeful practice and planning; to deliberately teach students how to ask their own questions.

The rigorous process of learning to develop and ask questions offers students the invaluable opportunity to become independent thinkers and self-directed learners. This also pushes our practices as teachers, from the proficient category according to Danielson's component 3b: Questioning and Discussion Techniques, to the distinguished category. As the teacher, you are leading a process in which your students will be thinking and working by asking their own questions, rather than responding to the ones that you ask. Students do the formulating of many questions, initiate topics, and make unsolicited contributions.



Teaching students to formulate their own questions, empowers them to be responsible for their own learning and also helps them refine a skill that has direct practical application in their daily lives. We can take action today to improve the quality of feedback and discussion in every classroom by teaching all students how to ask their own questions. Students will improve their discovery, engagement, and achievement!