Ten techniques I found myself using as I re-wrote old questions from my classroom.
Differentiation TechniqueAsk Better Questions
Read The OverviewFour Types of Questions You Can Ask
Asking questions is *such* a basic tool of teaching, yet how many of us have ever been taught to ask good questions? In this opening to a series about questioning, we'll explore how to get students asking each other questions.
Specific Examples of “Ask Better Questions”
Evaluate with Academic Tournaments
The bracketed tournament isn’t just for college basketball. Set up a tournament to determine best president, state, element, or literary character and challenge your students to make interesting judgements.
Depth and Complexity: ❓Unanswered Questions
By far, ❓Unanswered Questions was the prompt that I under-utilized with my own class. Now I see it in a whole new light, and boy is there immense power in prompting students to note and explore truly unanswered questions.
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?
The Resiliency Tournament
I got to work with several groups of students (of many ages) and I tried out this task: building a tournament to decide who was the most resilient historical figure or fictional character? Kids came up with some amazing ideas.