A teacher sent in a sequence of questions they had developed. Who is the primary antagonist in your novel? What makes this antagonist effective? How does the antagonist cause problems for the protagonist/other characters? What antagonist from another story, movie, or game is similar? If you could give the protagonist one gift to help him […]
Content Area: Language Arts
My Unreadable Question About Multiple Perspectives
As I browse my old worksheets for Depth and Complexity questions, this one really popped out. How could two experts’ 👓 perspectives regarding information from this reading selection differ from one another? Yikes. This looks like my college essays where I’d try to stretch every sentence to reach the minimum word count 😆 Clear It […]
Beyond “Describe How This Changed Over Time”
Here’s a task that I dug off of an old laptop: Describe a character or situation that ⏳ changed over time. Give examples from the story to prove it. Yeah. There’s a lot of work to be done here! Edit for Clarity First, the question is just poorly written. It’s a rough draft. When I […]
A Depth and Complexity ELA Worksheet with Problems
Here’s a Depth and Complexity worksheet I used to use with my students: I look at it now and shudder. I was making so many mistakes here. Let’s just zoom out and imagine that I asked the same questions at a book club with fellow adults. Me: What is this story’s main theme? Him: Oh, […]
Don’t Just List Ethical Issues
Here’s an example of a question I asked my students: ⚖️ What moral or ethical issues are raised in this book? What controversies exist? Now, the first problem is that this question is way too wordy. I often gave my class rough drafts of questions. Nowadays, I want to make sure to proofread, revise, and […]
Going Beyond “Identify a Story’s Problem”
Here is an embarrassingly low-level pair of questions I asked my students: What was the problem in this story? How was the problem solved? Now, it is technically a sequence of questions. But my students are stuck at the lowest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. I’m going to get the same responses from even my most […]
Improving “What’s The Chapter’s 🏛️ Big Idea?”
Here’s a Depth and Complexity question I found on an old worksheet: What title would you give this chapter? Explain why your title fits the chapter’s 🏛️ Big Idea. Sure, I’m using Depth and Complexity. But how am I asking students to think? Bloom’s Taxonomy is much more important than Depth and Complexity. (And it’s not […]
Don’t Just Paraphrase A Poem
I asked my students to read a poem. Then they had to: Paraphrase each line of the poem. Write your version next to the original line So, I’m not going to get into the pointlessness of this task. I had a room of the most brilliant 6th graders in town and this is what we […]
Upgrading “Put The Events In Order”
I often see this question on language arts and social studies worksheets: “Put these events in order.” Yes, it’s low-level, but the real problem is that it’s a one-off. Let’s make a sequence of questions about the order of events.
Updating Old Questions: A Character’s Bedroom
An under-developed task in which students designed a character’s room.