Thoughts on teaching & educational technology

I’ve heard Levels of Questions (LoQ to those in the know) described ‘the Cinderella Exercise’ by some sources, and I do use either that story or another popular fairy tale to introduce the model to my students. Any simple story that every student is almost certain to know will work, but fairy tales are useful because they tend to disarm students, get them talking and laughing a bit, and present great opportunities for unexpectedly deep thought.

Here’s how I’ve done it: I’ll break a class into several groups, of no more than four students each, and ask them as groups to quickly recount to one another the story of (insert fairy tale here). I give them a few minutes to do so, then we go around the room and a reporter from each group shares their version of the story with the whole class. The point of this is to establish a single version of the story for classroom use — the Disney movie differs somewhat from printed versions, and if any students are familiar with the Grimm’s versions they’ll have other perspectives. Anyway, once that single story is established, have the students work to write a few questions each. You could differentiate by asking some groups to write only L1 questions, while other (more advanced) students could write L2 and L3 questions. Do it as you please, but give them a few minutes to formulate what they think are good questions of each type.

In these early stages I have them write their questions on the boards, and we go through them as a class, checking for the following:

• Is it the level it purports to be?
• Is it concise and specific?
• Does it seek a fact or concept that is critical to the story?
• If it’s a Level 3, it is compelling and open-ended?

I’ve found that asking the students to jury the questions in this manner is far more effective than if I do it myself and give them feedback — they are far better at pointing out others’ mistakes than they are in noticing their own, and sometimes they listen to each other before an adult.

At every turn, students have the opportunity to learn how to be concise, and to ask clear questions that seek specific answers. And you’re helping them lay the groundwork for learning how to sift critical from non-critical information, and how to make connections between facts and concepts — because one without the other is pretty hollow.

Next time I’ll talk about some of the pitfalls I’ve experienced teaching LoQ.

jdg