Restructuring Your Question to Spark Engagement
As class starts there is a question about a graph on the Smartboard for the students to answer. The teacher takes attendance and walks around to observe and ask questions to the students about their answers. There are a variety of answers that are being written down. After allowing approximately 5 minutes to answer the question, the teacher asks students to share their thoughts with their shoulder partner. There was the typical discussion between students and then the teacher asks the students to volunteer their answers. As the discussion turned to the whole group, the discussions stopped and silence prevailed. The teacher calls on different students and they answer, but not necessarily confidently. This is strange to me, because the topic they are discussing is a review from the last couple of weeks. Class continues and the group work discussion is relatively low. The next part of the lesson is an independent assignment. As the teacher and I are discussing how class is going, they said they were shocked with the responses to the opening question. I inquire more about their thoughts and they said this class usually answers questions and is social. The next topic was about how can we increase engagement at the beginning of class. We work very quickly to come up with a plan for the next class to increase engagement. The plan was to change the opening question!! The question is reconfigured to an open-ended response. Now it asks students to write down everything they know about the graph on the board.
Class number 2 comes in sits down and begins to answer the new open-ended question on the board. Students are writing about everything from slope to ordered pairs. As the teacher walks around the class they begin to ask probing questions into the student responses. This enables the teacher to extend the learning that had taken place over the last two weeks. But on the other end of the spectrum, they are able to identify misconceptions that are still taking place (formative assessment). After approximately 7 minutes, the teacher asks students to share their ideas about the graph. Almost every hand goes up to share an idea about the graph. One question that the teacher asks during this time is "Does anyone have an observation about the graph that you think nobody in the class would think of?" A few hands went in the air immediately. The students were completely engaged in the class just by changing the question. The next question was the origin bellringer question. Students spent only a minute or two to answer the question. The engagement level is maintained throughout the class period. As we talked during the independent work time, the teacher says that the second class is usually very quiet and does not like to give oral responses.
Engagement is created through the types of questions and activities that are present within a lesson. The open-ended type of questions lead to discussions that gives the teacher an opportunity to identify misconceptions and/or extend student learning.
A good online resource for open-ended questions is openmiddle.com. This resources provides questions from Kindergarten to Calculus.
Food For Thought:
As you meet in your PLC and discuss student work, think about the following question:
Did we provide enough opportunities to engage students for us to be able to identify a student's current level of understanding of a topic or standard? [PLC Essential Question #2]
