![]() Of course, they will develop a much more supported, nuanced answer by the end, but they need to be intrigued from the start.Īnd you don’t intrigue anyone with a question they have no idea about. I know, I know, this seems strange if the whole point of asking questions is to measure what students have learned, but on Day 1 your students need to have an immediate gut-reaction answer to the unit’s driving question to be hooked. Mistake #1: Posing questions that can’t be answered immediately Here are those three question-asking mistakes I was making over the years in my social studies classroom with tips for how you can leapfrog over them and get to that magic part faster. Making those final rounds of tweaks made an enormous difference, so I have to share them with you. ![]() Part of what took me so long was that even though the intent behind my questions was in the right spot, I was still committing late-stage mistakes that were preventing the circuit of student learning to fully close. Students are genuinely interested, we are learning meaningful things, and they are set up to be successful. Over the years, I have had many failures, redos, and finally some successes, and, gosh, do those successes feel like magic. I kept asking myself, “How can I ask a better question to get a better outcome?” I’m certain it was because wording and rewording my questions was one of the few concrete things I felt I had control over in my students’ learning. And so that’s where I found myself in the trial-and-error hamster wheel for several years. I recall many conversations with my mentor teacher specifically about crafting questions.Įven with her help, though, it was clear that asking great questions is much more involved than a few isolated suggestions can solve. ![]() It’s one of those subtle yet fundamental skills I don’t recall explicitly learning in my teacher prep program, but it was so awkwardly and discouragingly apparent as soon as I was licensed and handed a roster of students. Certainly, not asking great questions anyway. But after spending any time at all teaching you know it’s not. ![]()
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