Ask Sequences, Never One-Off Questions Beware one-off questions. Any question that we prepare should have a natural follow-up question. And those follow-ups should push students up Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Sharpening Questions With some small changes, we can turn fluffy opinion questions into thought-provoking evaluation questions.
Divergent Questions (How To Ask ‘Em) How to ask Divergent Questions and ensure that your students are thinking rather than merely remembering.
From Silent Reading To Creating Art I've been continuing the idea to explore classic music during silent reaing, and incorporated Gustav Holsts' "The Planets." My students, who have an affinity for memorizing gods and goddesses, took a special interest in this idea. I figured, let's see how far their interests will take us?
Get Students Out Of Creative Ruts Sometimes students need a little structure to force them into a more creative state of mind. Here are a few ideas for interesting writing prompts
Don’t Jump Straight to “Create”! When we jump from "this kid likes board games" straight to "I'll have them create a new board game", we leave out important steps in the creative process and set kids up for disappointment (and end up with a lot of unfinished projects). Here's how to scaffold a truly creative task.
Create A Holiday Take students beyond the decorations and ask them to identify what a holiday reveals about a culture's values. Then, push them further as they develop their own holidays.
Create A Civilization: The River Most humans want to live near fresh water, which means that most civilizations settled near a river! Let's add a river to your students' civilizations.
Fluency: Asking For (Way) More Than One Answer Being able to generate many possible answers is key to high-level thinking. So why don't we ask students to do it more often?
Classic Paintings for your Classroom Exposing students to great pieces of art is an easy way to enhance a lesson, provide a visual way to practice a skill, and educate our students beyond the prescribed curriculum. Here's a list of works that you can easily grab and use in your class.
