How can we read and write with voice? My students will ask you!

Question Formulation Technique:

"IT IS POSSIBLE TO PERFORM WITH VOICE and TO WRITE WITH VOICE, LIKE WALT WHITMAN"

After a brief introduction to the rules of QFT from the book Make Just One Change (Rothstein & Santana, 2013), my students were ready to form questions in pairs (steps 1 and 2); they then vetted the questions in small groups (4 students) and we posted them on the board below.

The quality of the questions and range of participation was off the charts! We are studying Walt Whitman right now, so the idea of writing with voice and reading with voice coincides well with their work to perform a piece of poetry from memory (Poetryoutloud.org)

I can envision using QFT (Question Formulation Technique) in broad range of contexts. It was hard not to launch into an answer to the question or to discuss it; just ask the questions and use them a s focal points throughout the unit.

Comments

Affective Learning

Pundits abound with promises that technology can "replace the middleman" in education. Although I grate against the idea that a thoughtful, concerned, reflective, intelligent, passionate, caring adult--a teacher!--is the equivalent to a business owner who marks up merchandise for profit, the metaphor of the middleman forced me to think about just what, exactly, does the teacher add in a cloud-based, post-2007 , MOOC world, where a myriad of apps and sites (e.g. Khan Academy) can tailor feedback and where content has gotten so cheap (e.g. MIT's free courses, or sites like Coursera --featuring coursework from Stanford, UPenn, and Johns Hopkins--or nifty-looking courses like "Analytics in Course Design" through Dartmouth via Canvas ). Surely, teachers are not simply haggling with students for a better price on learning! But just the same, I am asking myself what is the value-added I am bringing to my students that cannot be replaced. But if teachers are middle...

Intention Deficit? Try hooking students with Why?

Lesson Hooks-- Cultivating an intention-rich classroom. Cognitive scientists point out the massively effective habit of recruiting and maintaining focus in the learning process. For learners--be they adults, children, or teens in between--the challenges of staying focused in our "intention - deficit" society can create real challenges to meaning making. In schools, we throw unending stimuli, ideas, facts, and figures at our students and wonder why they have trouble retaining. The point of starting a lesson in an interesting, purposeful way is to set the course of intention forward. One potential issue arises from the importance of setting the stage for students to become vested in what they are learning . Why are they being asked to learn a given topic? Why is it significant or important? Of course, drawing on their prior learning through discussion can create important bridges of learning as students connect old understandings and new co...

BOOK REVIEW

Book Review If this book is filled with so much common sense--offer choice, give students a voice in their learning-- then why do I find myself invigorated by the potential of my students as I read it? We want to offer answers, students want questions. We offer safety, they love risk. We want them to play the role of the dutiful student, and they want to play a socially important role, an expert or daring personality. Basically, Armstrong drives home the point that the intense neuroplasticity of adolescent brains makes teaching teens a bit of wild fun, but it's not a game whose rules we, as adults, often fully understand or remember. For example, one chapter focuses on peer learning communities. In my experience, and through my home school district, we have focused consistently on Cooperative Learning modalities which are informed by the research of David and Roger Johnson at the University of Minnesota. They remind us that cooperative learning is not an activity to do, ...

Teachers of Significance

Search This Blog