Thoughts on teaching & educational technology

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then it must be worth at least a few good questions — probably more, if students have been taught how to frame good questions. I use Levels of Questions, and the categorization of questions into L1, L2, and L3, as a common vocabulary to help students develop basic inquiry skills. I believe the easiest first foray into the land of inquiry is through a compelling image, like this one:

I’d project this on my screen (or you could display it on an overhead — it’s available from the Nat’l Archives.

Anyway, I’d start my class with that picture, and these instructions: “write as many relevant L1 and L2 questions as you can about this picture. Write questions that, if answered, will help you fully understand what is going on inside the frame of the picture — not outside of it, not related to or implied by it, but just inside the frame itself.”

I might give the students, early in the year, 5-7 minutes to write questions, after which we’d go over them as a class.

Going over their questions helps reinforce well-written questions, and helps the students recognize what sorts of questions are genuinely helpful in ‘unlocking’ a topic — that is, really helping them to learn about it.

Anyway, once the questions are written, the students need resources to dig through for answers. Empire High School subscribes to several of ABC-CLIO’s excellent social studies databases, and using them I can create customized ‘Research Lists’ of resources — pictures, quotes, biographies, essays, primary source documents, and more — for the students to use as springboards to learn about a given topic. As part of my lesson preparation I would have created a list of resources related to this image, or whatever image I was using for that lesson. I wouldn’t include anything too obvious — like an essay about women ordnance workers in WW2 — but I would populate the list with things like statistics about the demographics of the American labor force during WW2, a few biographies of major personalities from the time & topics, pictures of some of the many morale-boosting posters of the time, and other resources that would enable the students to answer the questions they had framed.

Then I set them loose for a given period of time, in class or out, to use the list of materials I’ve provided (which helps me stay on track to meet my mandated standards) to answer as many of their own questions as possible, and to write additional ones (more on that step later).

The point, at this simple, early stage, is that students quickly become more interested in the topic presented because they are approaching it and meeting it from where they are — not from where I want them to be. I might have some junior history buff who’d recognize the model of plane that those nose assemblies go to, and he/she would write questions based on that prior knowledge. I might have a student who has no clue at all what those things are — and he/she could frame questions that would be immediately useful in figuring out those critical basics — the key questions — that must be answered before any additional, deeper consideration can take place.

So it’s simple at the outset: students write their own questions, then go about answering them using teacher-selected resources that are topically-focused. More on what I do with all this in my next post.

jdg

Once students have become somewhat proficient with LoQ it’s time to put it to use. I’ve found that it’s best to get students working with the model, and framing questions, right away. This isn’t an adjunct to my lessons — it’s not a model that I use periodically — it’s what I do most of the time. That’s critical to the inquiry process — it has to become a habit of thought & action. If it’s treated like a type of lesson, like a simulation or debate or student presentations or whatever, it’s not going to work.

This doesn’t mean that you need to teach all your lessons from a pure inquiry standpoint, but it does mean that you will need to weave student-driven inquiry and questioning into every lesson. Otherwise, the skills get rusty, and are never developed to a high enough degree to enable consistent work at the top end of Bloom’s.

I’ve found a number of online resources that describe the inquiry process quite well, and instead of reinventing the wheel I’ll just dump one of the links here today, another in a day or so, and then a series of lessons and teaching experiences I’ve had with using different forms & modes of inquiry in my history and government classes over the last few years.

Inquiry-Based Learning

jdg

For those of you fortunate enough to have Turnitin.com (or ‘TII’ as I call it) at your school, here’s a simple tip to make using the discussion boards (they’re part of every class, and completely controlled by the teacher). My American Government students post analyses of news articles, and respond to the posts of their classmates, every two weeks. I ask them make a brief case for how the article directly ties to what we’re studying in class during that two-week period — it’s a great formative assessment of whether or not they’re getting the material, and can make the critical connection between content & reality.

Anyway, since TII embeds a discussion board in each class, I already have a user list, and they then post their thoughts, along with the article title & URL, and we’re off and running — it’s a nice asymmetrical discussion going on over a two-week period, but directly tied to what we’re studying in class at the same time.

My News Journals, as I call them, are due every two weeks — and since I set the due dates way in advance, all I need to do in TII is take about 10 minutes and I can set up all the journals for the entire semester at once. I set all the open and close dates for all the two-week journals, and I don’t have to worry about them after that — the system opens & closes the boards automatically. I did this last year and it worked perfectly — I actually ended up putting in all the journal windows (or whatever you might call them) for the entire school year…it took me about 30 minutes, and I didn’t give it another thought for the rest of the year. All I had to do was drop in periodically on the board that was open to weigh in with my thoughts, and check each open board a few times a week to assess & assign grades. Easy stuff, and it built a habit for the kids.

jdg

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

I introduced LoQ in my previous post, and promised to provide examples for each level — here they are.

Concerning the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the following questions would all be valid within the model:

Level 1

1. Where is Pearl Harbor?
2. When did the attack occur?
3. What did the Japanese attack?

Level 2

1. How did the Japanese keep the attack a secret?
2. Why did they attack Pearl Harbor?
3. How did the attack affect American public opinion?

Level 3

1. Would it have made more sense for the Japanese to invade Hawaii, rather than just attack it?
2. How would the results of the attack have differed if the American aircraft carriers had been in port at the time?

Notice that there are clear, single-sentence answers for the L1s, while the L2s require use of some of the L1 facts along with description & explanation, as well as additional information. Regardless of the differences, L1s and L2s do have answers — the former being clear & concrete; the latter somewhat less so. L3s, on the other hand, do not have clear answers — they may not have answers on which people can agree at all. You might think that such questions do not have a place in the classroom, especially on in which we’re trying to teach standards & content. I disagree. While there are not definite answers to L3 questions, valid arguments supported by evidence will go along way to constructing compelling cases — and along the way, students will have to demonstrate a keen knowledge and understanding of the facts & concepts in order to make any sense. So L3s, while naturally ambiguous and difficult to answer, are the very questions students need to be able to wrestle with most.

So there’s the model, in the form that I teach and use. In my next post I’ll describe how I teach it to my students, and will address the challenges they’ve had in working to become proficient with it.

jdg

Student-driven inquiry can’t take place if students don’t know how to ask good questions. This is probably the greatest impediment to doing any sort of inquiry-based assignment, to say nothing of making it a regular process. In my experience as a teacher, students know how to answer questions given to them, so long as they are directly tied to the text, lecture, or other class materials. But they are ill-equipped, and generally averse to, framing their own.

Why it is important to teach students how to frame clear, targeted questions? Don’t we have to teach our content? Who has time for ’soft’ skills not mandated by the standards? And forget about it if you’re teaching to/for/under a standardized test, right? Those are the sorts of responses I’ve heard from many teachers when asked if they’d be willing to take the time to teach question-writing to students. But inquiry can’t begin, and can’t become a habit of thought & work, if students can’t — or won’t — ask questions.

At the beginning of the year my students are usually happy to know that I don’t teach my American History classes in the normal fashion. Instead of proceeding through the years chronologically, beginning at some fixed point in the past and trying to make it as close to today by the end of the year, I teach thematically. I’m not going to delve into what that means, and how I do it, in this post — that’s not my point — but it’s enough to know that the students are generally happy to hear that this is not going to be just another history course, so much like the many they’ve already taken. Quickly, however, they realize that while doing things in the normal fashion may be dry, it is also predictable, and therefore safe. When I put the weight of the learning process — that is, the construction of knowledge & understanding — on them, they realize that ‘different’ does not mean ‘easier.’

So how do I get them to ask questions, and good ones at that? The first thing they need to learn is that there are different types of questions, which seek different types of answers — this may sound obvious, but this kind of metacognition is not natural to most high school students. They’ve been so busy having content crammed down their throats that very few of them have ever taken a moment to consider how this is all taking place. I refer to Bloom’s Taxonomy at this point, to show that there are different levels of thought, from the most basic to the most advanced, with each level serving different purposes — yet all are important. I’ll describe how I use Bloom’s, and how it ties in with student-driven inquiry, more in a future post.

Anyway, the question-writing model I use first is called Levels of Questions, which I learned several years ago at an AP Summer Institute. If you do a search online for the model, you’ll find several different forms of it, but the form I’ll describe here is the one that I was taught, and after looking at others, I believe this one makes most sense. The facilitator introduced us to it as a reading strategy — as something students could do when assigned readings for class — but I’ve used it as my introduction to question-framing far more than just as a reading strategy.

Anyway, LoQ, as we refer to it at Empire, is made up of three levels — I, II, and III. Level 1 questions seek facts; they always begin with who, what, where, when, how many (a specific number), or how long (a specific duration). They should be answerable with one sentence, since they each seek only one fact. They are direct, unambiguous, and their answers are explicit in any text or other resource used. Level 1 questions are nothing to debate — they are facts only, and form the foundation of whatever topic is being considered. Level 2 questions always and only begin with how or why, and seek answers that describe process and reason. They take the L1 facts and tie them together into some kind of rational context in order to tell a story. The answers to L2 questions are often implied rather than clearly stated in whatever text or resources are being used, and therefore require more thought on the part of the writer and audience. Level 3 questions do not refer directly to the text; rather, they are a result of consideration of and reaction to what the topic means or suggests to the student. In jargon, it’s “out of the box,” synthetic or values-based.

In my next post I’ll provide examples of each level.
jdg

Maybe I ought to say that inquiry leads to or enables the construction of knowledge. Regardless, an inquiry-based approach to the study of history is very different from the norm. I mentioned the model that most people experience in their high school history classes, which is largely based in building a knowledge of a pre-existing narrative, and then having one’s knowledge of that narrative tested. I’m not going to go into that any more here, though — we’ve all experienced it

Here’s what student-driven inquiry can accomplishes: it enables students to both learn content and valuable thinking skills, simultaneously. In some ways, once it has become a habit — the habit of class — it actually reduces teacher planning time for some units. Students tend to be more engaged when they feel that they’re guiding, or possibly even leading, their own learning. Classroom discussions are better — richer, more informed, and based on valid arguments. This may not all happen at once (actually, it won’t), and it won’t happen evenly (it’s a year-long process, at the least). Students begin to check one another when lapses of reason take place…and the friendly competition that can ensue in a well-managed discussion or debate encourages all students to show up with their game face on. And the students learn the content better, so don’t worry about meeting your standards.

Through inquiry, history class can become something that students don’t dread and lament. That’s what it can accomplish, if done well and consistently. Where inquiry begins is the topic of my next post.

jdg

I shy away from jargon like “critical thinking” because it’s overused; it lacks meaning at this point. So I’ll just call it ‘thinking’ instead — call it semantics derived from my attitudinal issues, but there it is. Consider this: what is uncritical thinking, but not really thinking at all? So slapping ‘critical’ on the front end doesn’t do much.

Real thinking is rational, based in facts used as evidence. It makes sense because it avoids fallacious reasoning, and actively seeks to debunk the fluff that so many people pass off as reasoning. Real thinking buries arguments supported only by “well that’s my opinion….” It enjoys slapping around the ‘hobgoblin of inconsistency.’ In short, it is demonstrated mastery of content through the practiced application of reasoning — knowledge for a purpose. Thinking enables a comprehensive mastery of content, because the understanding of it is arrived at through that rational thought. The two go hand-in-hand.

I suppose content knowledge could be attained without thinking — that’s just Bloom’s 1 & 2 at work. One could easily memorize another’s analysis, and parrot it when necessary. But in that there is no understanding, no ability to look at the content from different angles or use it in different situations. That’s pretty mindless — maybe good for playing Trivial Pursuit, but not for a whole lot else.

The social studies — and I’ll mainly use history as my example — is the perfect place to first learn and further hone thinking skills. And what a tremendous waste it is when history teachers do not realize this, and conduct their classes to enable that learning. Why bother learning about the Persian Wars? Who cares about the Roman Republic? How about coloring locations on a map, or creating (copying?) a timeline? These are pretty worthless pursuits, I believe, unless students are taught — and in part forced — to truly think in order to engage in them. The content then has purpose, and the students will have learned skills that are far more important to their lives than, say, the fact that corvus was a spiked plank. That fact is pointless unless they can answer the questions of why it was important, and how it impacted its times.

So there it is, I think. The study of history, for secondary students at least, lacks real value unless it is taught in such a manner that enables and requires students to learn actual thinking skills, rather than just rote memorization. That’s where historical inquiry comes in, and I’ll address what I believe it to be — based on what I’m doing in my classroom and what I’ve cobbled together from various people & sources — in the next post.

jdg

I’ve heard a lot about inquiry-based teaching over the last few years, most of it related to science subjects. I’ve looked at its applicability in other areas — specifically social studies — and have found a decent, but uneven field of work. There were a number of workshops at NCSS in Washington, DC, last year, and I’ve seen articles in Social Education and other publications that mention it, or supposedly focus on it. The problem I’ve run into is that there doesn’t seem to be a single definition of it — much like “one to one” laptop learning, the meaning of it entirely depends on who you’re talking with.

Anyway, I was formally introduced to historical inquiry when I started working with ABC-CLIO, our online content provider. Without bogging down in a history of how I came to be involved with them, I’ll leave it at this: I discovered with them what is now my vocabulary for describing this process, and I realized that I’d been doing parts of the model already, albeit in different forms and for different reasons.

Before going into what it is, let me say what it’s not. It’s not anything like how I learned history in high school. I took Honors World History, Honors Non-Western Civ, AP US History and AP American Government — and barring the odd activity, these were all taught by lecture. My teachers, who all seemed to really know their stuff and care about the content to some degree, delivered it to me as a package, which I was supposed to take in as a whole, preserve, and display on command. The following is a list of what I experienced in my high school social studies classes.

• Coloring maps
• Making timelines
• Debates that were based more in our opinions than facts
• Roleplays that were completely based in our opinions, and not the facts
• Many, many lectures, all accompanied by formal outlines several chalkboards long
• Answering questions at the end of each section, chapter, and unit
• Objective exams looking for my knowledge of a set list of facts
• Subjective exams seeking the correct interpretation & analysis (there’s only one, right?)

Fortunately I come from a family that values history, knowledge, and reading, and so the fact that I don’t remember learning anything in those classes probably didn’t do me much harm. It’s not that I didn’t learn anything — I’m sure I did. I just don’t remember what I learned — and I think it’s important for people to be able to take some kind of an inventory of their knowledge, otherwise it’s hard to be sure of what you might be capable of doing. And after all, if you’ve no idea what you learned, what’s the point in learning it in the first place? That’s like having a huge savings account and not knowing it exists…unless you stumble across it one day, it’s not going to do you any good.

When I started teaching I naturally took the approach that knowledge and understanding of history has value, and not just because someone, at some point, said it had value. I believe it has value in that it helps us understand contemporary issues, and helps provide perspective on how people behave by looking at how they have behaved in the past. I think, however, that the most important function of a study of history is that if done well it is the perfect laboratory in which to learn & develop thinking skills– the ability to wrestle with questions that begin with ‘how’ and ‘why.’

I’ll write more about how Social Studies classes are the perfect place for students to learn thinking skills — and what I think those skills are — in my next post.

jdg