Week 3 of the 2016 Blogging Initiative!

We’re halfway through the blogging initiative! Huzzah!

This week, the blogging prompt is going to be around questioning.

Ages ago (in internet time, that would be 2010), Dan Meyer showed us an infamous example of a bad textbook question.

Around that time, I was figuring out how to switch from saying “soooo… any questions?” to “what questions do you have?”

How we question — on assessments, verbally — and how students learn to question is an important part what we do on a daily basis. Good questioning can provoke class discussion, debate, uncover misconceptions, and invoke curiosity and wonder.

This blogging prompt is designed to help all of us think a bit more about our own questioning. Pick one of the following and blog about it!

• You’re planning a lesson and you try to come up with super good question to ask to get kids to think about something. What is that question? Why did you phrase it the way you did? Why do you think it will prompt discussion/thinking?
• You taught a lesson. You asked a question. How did it go? Flop? Success? Muse on why it turned out the way it did. Is there a way to improve the question?
• You come up with a question. You realize there is a better way to ask it. You rewrite it. Talk about this.
• A student asked a question that got you twitterpated. What was the question?
• A student asked a question that really got other students thinking. What was the question?
• A student asked a question and you didn’t know how to answer it well. Now class is over. Think about how you could have responded better.
• A student asked a question. What did that question tell you about their thinking?
• You write an awesome test question. Discuss why you think it’s awesome. If you gave it, how did your kids do. Did it elicit what you hoped? Is there a way to improve it?
• You wrote a test question that sucked. Kids didn’t interpret it correctly, or there was something about it that didn’t quite work. Rewrite it.
• You come up with a question. What is the purpose of the question? Who benefits from the question — you or the student(s)?
• You have a great memory and remember a conversation you had with kids, an interesting back and forth. Type out that conversation!
• Anything else that you can think of that will help you think about questioning. 

Deadline: Press submit by the end of the day Saturday, January 30, 2016.

If you’d like a little graphic to include in your post, here is a little whatchamacallit we made:

When you’ve written and published your blogpost:

1. Tweet out the link to your blogpost with a short description, and include the #MTBoS hashtag.
2. If you’re a mentee, email your mentor the link! And if you’re a mentor, read and comment on your mentee’s post!
3. In the comments to this blogpost here, throw down the link to your blogpost and a short teaser.
4. Look at the three comments that are listed above your comment. Click on those three links, read the three blogposts, and talk to the authors by leaving a comment on their blogposts (not here).

And that’s all!

PS. If you enjoyed thinking about questioning, there is a collective #MTBoS blog you can check out! It is called BetterQs, and you can read posts on it, and if you want to become an occasional or regular author, just click on “Want to Join?” at the top of the blog and fill out the form!