Question Reconstruction: Guiding Student Discussion Through Quality Questioning

By MK Jarvis

On a Saturday before the holidays, my middle school had a professional development during which we watched a video about classroom discussion.  The information was awesome, so I asked my principal for the book on which the video was based entitled Questioning for Classroom Discussion: Purposeful Speaking, Engaged Listening, and Deep Thinking by Jackie Acree Walsh and Beth Dankert Sattes.  Just a few days ago, my book arrived and I am really excited about what it is teaching me.

If you are a newish teacher like me and you have many of those “Rats, I should have taught that lesson another way!” moments and need all the help you can get or you are a teacher who is looking to deepen the thinking processes of your students, this book might be a good place to start.  I’ve barely scratched the surface of this text, but I am already very excited to apply the concepts Walsh and Sattes present in their book.  

I realize so far I have been making a couple of mistakes in my attempts to encourage my students to have significant classroom discussions.  My first mistake is I present questions in recitation instead of discussion.  While questioning in recitation is important as it is a skillful way to check for understanding, questioning for discussion “helps to build and deepen understanding and oftentimes occurs after students have mastered core content” (Walsh and Sattes 15). When I desire a discussion, I don’t want students just regurgitating definitions or information they have read or heard.  I want them to use critical thinking and make connections with the texts they are studying and what other students are saying.

My second mistake is that my questions are not crafted to enable students to apply critical thinking and make connections.  Walsh and Sattes tell us to identify the issue, craft the question, and anticipate student responses.

Identifying an issue is probably the easiest part.  We have more issues these days than ever!  The issue we have been wrestling with in my 7th grade English class is allegiance to our flag and our first amendment rights.  In the US we cannot make anyone, even school children, stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.  Some of my students stand and some don’t.  At first, this bothered me immensely.  I’m old fashioned maybe, but it hurt me somehow that the kids didn’t care to stand.  Then I began wondering if they knew why they were or were not standing or were they just doing what others were doing.  Here was the question I asked: Why do you or do you not stand for the Pledge of Allegiance?  Pretty simple, but not very inspiring in the critical thinking/discussion arena.

Walsh and Sattes tell us that strong focus questions share the following characteristics:

• Academic vocabulary that is appropriate to the age and grade level of the students.
• Strong verbs intentionally chosen to activate student thinking at a particular level.
• A simple and straightforward sentence structure.
• Delivery within a meaningful context (teachers might need to prepare a statement that provides focus or context before asking the question) (19).

 

How can I fix my question to help the students deepen their thinking about our issue?  

I’ll start with meaningful context.

Currently in the United States, many citizens, some very prominent in government or pop culture, have decided to stop observing the Pledge of Allegiance and The Star Spangled Banner at public events.

Then I’ll use strong verbs.

Consider why one might resolve to refuse reciting or singing a pledge to the flag of the United States.  Consider why one might continue reciting or singing a pledge to the flag of the United States.

We have defined the words pledge, allegiance, republic, indivisible, and liberty.  Analyze each definition and determine why in 1892 Francis Bellamy might have used these words when drafting the first version of the Pledge of Allegiance.  Contemplate why these words might still be relevant today.

The words to the Pledge of Allegiance have changed several times through the years.  Thinking about your own perception of the Pledge, how might you revise the words to better represent our country today?

Hey, that looks better already, but now I must anticipate student responses to these questions.  I have to think about “logical and defensible lines of reasoning and erroneous thinking” from students and how I might “plan effective teacher moves” (21).  If I anticipate responses, I may be better able to guide the students’ discussion.  I could prompt them if needed to.

Like I said, I’m just scratching the surface of Questioning for Classroom Discussions, but I feel I’m travelling in a good directions. Teachers crafting quality questions is essential to a dynamic classroom and if ever our students needed to learn the skills of strong civil discourse, it is now. 

 

WVCTE is wondering … How are you crafting quality questions to foster deeper discussions in you classroom?

Leave us a comment, Tweet us your thoughts @WVCTE, or connect with us on Facebook!

 

Walsh, Jackie Acree., and Beth Dankert. Sattes. Questioning for classroom discussion: purposeful speaking, engaged listening, deep thinking. Hawker Brownlow Education, 2016.

 

 

 

The Crossover and Solo: Books That Both You and Your Students Will Love

BY: LIZ KEIPER

I’m a big fan of Kwame Alexander’s book The Crossover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

image via The Guardian

I’ll admit—at first I was a bit skeptical. When we received word last school year that Berkeley County high schools were going to be reading The Crossover as a county One Book event, I was not immediately sold.

“So, it’s one of those poetry-novels. Teen angst and basketball…” I mean, I’ll try anything once, but I was not ready for how powerful that book was.

It’s about basketball… but it’s about so much more. The big ideas forming the story are incredible—family, sacrifice, love, acceptance, jealousy, revenge, (spoiler alert!) death. The poetry is rhetorically rich. There are motifs and symbolism galore, and also Biblical allusions… There are two brothers, one of whom is jealous of the other and wounds the other out of jealousy. (Cain and Abel, much?) Also, the two brothers happen to be named Joshua and Jordan, and at the end of the story, Joshua crosses over Jordan in a basketball move (eerily similar to Joshua crossing over the Jordan River into the Promised Land).

For many students, basketball was the hook or initial interest point, but there was so much more that they got from the text.

I remember telling a friend, “The Crossover isn’t just a popular poetry-novel; it’s LITERATURE!”
And Solo is no exception to that.

image via epicreads.com

It is the newest book written co-written by Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess. The story is about a boy named Blade who is the son of a formerly famous, now drug addicted, rock star. Blade goes on a journey in search of his past, and ultimately himself. He is an avid classic rock fan, so rock songs and references to them are woven throughout.

But of course, it’s about far more than just classic rock. Solo is also rife with symbolism, themes, allusions, powerful rhetoric, interesting poetic structure, and just about every archetype under the sun. However, I’m not going to give away too much more before you read it. ☺

I think that several activities that I used in my classroom with The Crossover would also work well with Solo (or any other novel told through poetry) because of the structure of the text.
During reading with The Crossover, I had my students analyze poems of their choosing from the book. Below are my instructions and here’s a copy of the document.

We analyzed the first poem “Dribbling” as a class, and the rest were their free choice.

For me, this helped me not go “overkill” on the book during reading. This held the students responsible for deep thinking but also let them enjoy the flow of the story as well.

The Crossover is also a phenomenal mentor text for poetry writing. During reading, I had students write a Found poem modeled after the newspaper-story-turned-poem “Article #1 in the Daily News (December 14),” a List poem modeled after “Five Reasons I Have Locks,” and a Definition poem modeled after “ca-lam-i-ty.”

For each of these types of poems, we read and analyzed a model poem from The Crossover as a class, I showed them an example that I had written based on the model, and then I gave them the remaining time in class to write their own. They then decorated their favorite poem that they had written for display.

As an after-reading activity, I identified three main motifs that I found significant in the book: Flight/Flying, Stars, and the word Crossover. I split the students into groups and assigned each group a motif. I gave each group six different instances of that motif in the story and had them look up all those instances. Then as a group, they had to decide what the recurring symbol seemed to represent and why. Here’s the motifs handout that accompanied the task.

Along with meshing well with the above-mentioned techniques, the new book Solo is also a fabulous example of the classical quest and the concept of The Hero’s Journey. Here’s a cool tie-in video for your kids to explain The Hero’s Journey and why it’s important.

In Solo, (don’t worry, I won’t spoil it!) the main character Blade has a recurring dream in which he hears a call to “wake up and face the spider.” Throughout the story, he develops many theories as to who or what the “spider” is or what this means. He then proceeds to go on a quest in which he gains much more than he expected and deciphers the nature of the “spider.” All of this is part of his Hero’s Journey.

A few years ago, I taught English 12, and after reading Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, I showed my students the above Hero’s Journey Ted Ed video, and they identified the elements of the journey for both Beowulf and Sir Gawain. Then, that gave us a chance to make text-to-self connections—what is your Grendel? What is your Green Knight?

Or, in the case of Solo, what is your Spider? What is a fear or obstacle that is keeping you from your goals—your destination?

One of the deepest powers of story is how it can impact and teach. And you can definitely get to that level with your students and Solo.

So, whether you just decide to read it as a last-hurrah of summer, whether this inspires you to try to write a grant to get a classroom set, or whether you pick up a copy for your classroom library and wait for that kid with the Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin t-shirt to walk into your classroom during the first month of school and you use it to hook them on a good book… I hope that you and your students get a taste of this book.

And may you wake up and face your Spider.

WVCTE is wondering…

1) Have you read or taught The Crossover? What other engaging activities do you suggest with the text?
2) With what other quest/Hero’s Journey stories would the Ted Ed video be useful?
Leave us a comment, Tweet us your thoughts @WVCTE, or connect with us on Facebook!