Weekly Coaching Communication
Make it a great day -- every day!
01-05 April 2019
HATS OFF TO YOU!
- HUGE SHOUT OUT to our Blended Learning Teachers:
The word is getting out about CPU as a district and as a high school and our progress with blended learning. On Tuesday afternoon, during a coaching webinar, Beth Swantz from GWAEA shared some of the district work that the admin, ICs and some teachers are working on to create accountability and consistency for our blended approach. Also, MS. Swantz was so impressed with what she observed here on Monday, she showcased some of the blended teachers in her blog. Here is the link to read her blog. All of this PR and feedback from Beth is because of our blended learning teachers' hard work and diligence to implement the blended approach with fidelity in your classrooms.
Congratulations to Mr. Simmelink and his FBLA group -- way to rep #CPUnation
Congratulations to Mr. Wilson and the high school jazz singers for your performance at the Iowa Vocal Jazz Championships
Science Teachers: Thank you for opening your classrooms for observations a week ago Thursday for Ms. Laura Musser and me -- great work is happening with visible learning and standards here!
- Thank you Mrs. Larson for sweeping up the pile of dirt left on the landing of the steps going up to the library -- epitome of team and pride in our building
- Shout out to Mrs. Herring and Mr. Tupa for escorting our young leaders to the Ed Thomas Leadership Conference on Tuesday of this week
- A big thank you to Mr. Libolt, Mrs. Larson and Mrs. James for their service on the District Review Committee and listening to the instructional coach and data team leader interviews/reviews -- long day but such important work to the sustainability of the TLC program
- Thank you Mr. Tjaden and Mrs. Cummings for sponsoring the National Honor Society students so they could host the blood drive
- Special Shout out to Mr. Simmelink and his crew for a successful McTeacher's Night at McDonald's; Dr. Andersen, Mr. Halac, Mrs. Mahoney, Mrs. Larson, Mrs. Herring and Mr. Burke made some dreams come true
#nobetterplacetowork #CPUnation
*As always . . . my intent here is not to leave out anyone, so if you know of some great things happening in this building, please send me a text or email so I can include them -- share the greatness that people are choosing to do for our learners and for each other.
An Updated Guide To Questioning In The Classroom by TeachThought
* The article is a bit lengthy, but the graphics and headings provide easy navigation and skimming.
05 August 2018, TeachThought Staff Writer
Something we’ve become known for is our focus on thought, inquiry, and understanding, and questions are a big part of that. We’ve done questions that students should ask, parents should ask, students should and shouldn’t answer, questions that promote and stifle inquiry, questions that reveal self-knowledge and wisdom, and more.
If the ultimate goal of education is for students to be able to effectively answer questions, then focusing on content and response strategies makes sense. If the ultimate goal of education is to teach students to think, then focusing on how we can help students ask better questions themselves might make sense, no?
Why Questions Are More Important Than Answers
The ability to ask the right question at the right time is a powerful indicator of authentic understanding. Asking a question that pierces the veil in any given situation is itself an artifact of the critical thinking teachers so desperately seek in students, if for no other reason than it shows what the student knows, and then implies the desire to know more.
Asking a question (using strategies to help students ask better questions, for example) is a sign of understanding, not ignorance; it requires both knowledge and then– critically–the ability to see what else you’re missing. Questions are more important than answers because they reflect both understanding and curiosity in equal portions. To ask a question is to see both backward and forward–to make sense of a thing and what you know about it, and then extend outward in space and time to imagine what else can be known, or what others might know. To ask a great question is to see the conceptual ecology of the thing.
In a classroom, a student can see a drop of water, a literary device, a historical figure, or a math theorem, but these are just fragments that are worthless in and of themselves.A student in biology studying a drop of water must see the water as infinitely plural–as something that holds life and something that gives life. As a marker of life, and an icon of health. It is a tool, a miracle, a symbol, and a matter of science. They must know what’s potentially inside of a drop of water, and then how to find out what’s actually inside that drop of water. They must know what others have found studying water, as well as what that drop of water means within the field of science, and beyond it. They must know that water is never really just water.
When teachers try to untangle this cognitive mess, they sacrifice personalization for efficiency. There are simply too many students, and too much content to cover, so they cut to the chase. Which means then tend towards the universal over the individual–broad, sweeping questions intermingling with sharper, more concise questions that hopefully shed some light and cause some curiosity. In a class of 30 with an aggressively-paced curriculum map and the expectation that every student master the content regardless of background knowledge, literacy level, or interest in the material, this is the best most teachers can do.
This only a bottleneck, though, when the teacher asks the questions. When the student asks the question, the pattern is reversed. The individual student has little regard for the welfare of the class, especially when they’re forming questions. They’re on the clock to say something, anything. Which is great, because questions–when they’re authentic–are automatically personal because they came up with them. They’re not tricks, or guess-what-the-teacher’s-thinking.
A student couldn’t possibly capture the scale of confusion or curiosity of 30 other people; instead, they survey their own thinking, spot both gaps and fascinations, and form a question. This is the spring-loading of a Venus flytrap. The topic crawls around in the mind of the student innocently enough, and when the time is right–and the student is confident–the flower snaps shut. Once a student starts asking questions, that magic of learning can begin. And the best part for a teacher? Questions reveal far more than answers ever might.
The Purpose of Questions
Thought of roughly as a kind of spectrum, four purposes of questions might stand out, from more “traditional” to more “progressive.” In What Is The Purpose Of A Question?, Terry Heick said: “To be a little more abstract, a good question causes thinking–more questions. Better questions. It clarifies and reveals. It causes hope. A bad question stops thinking. It confuses and obscures. It causes doubt.”
7 Common Written Assessment Question Forms
Questions as written assessment (as opposed to questions as inquiry, questions to guide self-directed learning, or questions to demonstrate understanding) most commonly take the following forms in writing:
1. Matching
2. True/False
3. Multiple Choice
4. Short Answer
5. Diagramming
6. Essay
7. Open-Ended
Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive Dissonance is the cognitively-uncomfortable act of holding two seemingly competing beliefs at the same time. If you believe that Freedom of Speech is the foundation of democracy, but then are presented with a perspective (through Socratic-style questioning from the teacher, for example), you arrive (or the student does) at a crossroads where they have to adjust something–either their belief, or their judgment about the validity of the question itself.
In this way, questions can promote Cognitive Dissonance–which means a good question can change a student’s mind, beliefs, or tendency to examine their own beliefs. Questions, cognitive, and self-reflection go hand-in-hand.
Role of “Lower-Level” Questions
Lower-level questions are questions that inquire at “lower levels” of various learning taxonomies. These are often “recall,” questions that are based in fact—definitions, dates, names, biographical details, etc.
Education is thought to have focused (without having been there, who knows for sure?) on these lower levels, and “low” is bad in academics, right? “Lower-level” thinking implies a lack of “higher level” thinking, so instead of analyzing, interpreting, evaluating, and creating, students are defining, recalling, and memorizing, the former of which make for artists and designers and innovators, and the latter of which make for factory workers. And that part, at least, is (mostly) true.
Recall and memorization aren’t the stuff of understanding, much less creativity and wisdom, except that they are. Bloom’s Taxonomy was not created to segregate “good thinking” from “bad thinking.” In their words, “Our attempt to arrange educational behaviors from simple to complex was based on the idea that a particular simple behavior may become integrated with other equally simple behaviors to form a more complex behavior.”
In this way, the taxonomy is simply one way of separating the strands of thinking like different colored yarn–a kind of visual scheme to see the pattern, contrasts, and even sequence of cognitive actions. Nowhere does it say that definitions and names and labels and categories are bad–and if it did, we’d have to wonder about the taxonomy rather than assuming that they were.
It doesn’t take much imagination to see that if a student doesn’t know there was a war, and that it was fought in the United States in the 1800s, and that it was purportedly over states’ rights, and that both culture, industry, and agriculture all impacted the hows, whens, and whys of the war, that “higher level thinking strategies” aren’t going to be very useful.
In short, lower-level questions can both illuminate and establish foundational knowledge on which to build more complex and nuanced understanding of content. They provide a foothold for thinking.
To further the point, in 5 Common Misconceptions About Bloom’s Taxonomy, Grant Wiggins explains that the phrases “higher-order” and “lower-order” don’t appear anywhere in the taxonomy.
Essential Questions
Grant Wiggins defined an essential question as those that are “broad in scope and timeless by nature. They are perpetually arguable.”
Examples of Essential Questions
- What is justice?
- Is art a matter of taste or principles?
- How far should we tamper with our own biology and chemistry?
- Is science compatible with religion?
- Is an author’s view privileged in determining the meaning of a text?
- causes genuine and relevant inquiry into the big ideas and core content;
- provokes deep thought, lively discussion, sustained inquiry, and new understanding as well as more questions;
- requires students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support their ideas, and justify their answers;
- stimulates vital, on-going rethinking of big ideas, assumptions, and prior lessons; sparks meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experiences;
- naturally recurs, creating opportunities for transfer to other situations and subjects.
HABITS of MIND CHALLENGE . . .
Here is my progress on my two goals:
MY GOAL: To share wonderment and awe with at least one teacher for each day that I am able to be in the building. The observable data will be consistently based on teacher practice and highly effective strategies.
Measurement: Tally record by date for teachers with whom I have noted the observable data. Carbon copy or photocopy notes for record.
For the MONTH of . . .
January Goal NOT Met 0/3 weeks
February Goal Met 3/4 weeks
March Goal Met 4/4 weeks
3/4 Goal Met (4 notes/4 days)
3/11 GOAL (3 notes/3 days)
3/18 GOAL (5 notes/4 days)
3/25 GOAL (8 notes/2.5 days)
MY GOAL: To better prepare questions and think of potential roadblocks ahead of conversations and to actually ask the questions that generate from the discussion.
Measurement: Prepare (in writing) questions and potential roadblocks ahead of conversations. When a question arises in conversation, write the stem and ASK IT. Reflect on the usefulness of preparation questions and problems after each conversation with a + or - for usefulness. During conversation questions will be recorded and tallied.
For the MONTH of . . .
January Goal NOT Met 0/3 weeks
February Goal Met 3/4 weeks
March Goal Met 3/4 weeks
3/4 GOAL MET (3 Conversations)
3/11 GOAL NOT MET (3/4 Conversations)
3/18 GOAL MET (2/2 Conversations)
3/25 GOAL MET (1/1 Conversations)
Coaching Schedule -- see Google Calendar for specific "Busy" times **schedule subject to change**
Monday, 01 April
- ISASP Testing
- 1:00 - 3:00 PM Blended Learning District Meeting @ Primary
- Serve Teachers & Students
- Research & Resources
Tuesday, 02 April
- ISASP Testing
- Serve Teachers & Students
- Research & Resources
Wednesday, 03 April -- 7:30 AM Morning MTG -- Data Teams (SWIVL Grennan & Kruckenberg)
- 10:30 - 11:30 PM Social Studies Interview
- Serve Teachers & Students
- Research & Resources
- 3:30 - 5:00 SDI Leadership Retreat
Thursday, 04 April
- ISASP Testing
- 9:00 - 10:00 AM IC/Program Lead Mtg
- 12:30 - 1:30 PM IC/Principal Meeting w/ Libolt
- Serve Teachers & Students
- Research & Resources
Friday, 05 April
- ISASP Testing
- 9:00 - 3:00 Social Studies Interviews
- Serve Teachers & Students
- Research & Resources
ARCHIVE LINKS
Click on the link to access 2015-16 prior weekly communications.
Pope's IC Weekly Communication Archive & Index 2016-17
Click on the link to access 2016-17 prior weekly communications.
Pope's IC Weekly Communication Archive & Index 2017-18
Click on the link to access 2016-17 prior weekly communications.
Contact Information
Center Point - Urbana CSD
Email: epopenhagen@cpuschools.org
Phone: 319-849-1102+91015
Twitter: @Epopenhagen