Guest Writer: Paige Satcher How often do we walk by middle, high school, or college classrooms with students sitting perfectly still in neatly aligned rows, eyes fixed on a textbook or on a teacher in the front of the room? How often do we see those teachers whose classrooms are always pin-drop silent and whose […]
questioning
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Boosting Critical Thinking Skills Through Guided Reading
by: Candice Yamnitz Guided reading: HOT stem posters, language objectives with higher DOK questions, and lesson plans designed with student thinking in mind, OH MY! In my dual-language 4th-grade classroom, we were set! The students were going to be critical thinkers. This eventually did happen with 100% of my students, but it wasn’t the whole […]
Posted inElementary School, Instruction & Curriculum, Instructional Strategies, Literacy
Close Reading and Deep Thinking = “Textploration”
My focus in this piece will be on inspiring truly close reading and deeper thinking as a facet of ELA instruction. When a reader can go beyond recall; go beyond simple inference and analysis, and go spelunking deep into reflection on and evaluation of story characters and elements (while using the text to support their […]
Posted inClassroom Management
What Will Your Students Get To DO Today?
Monday we have in-service. It is not something I look forward to, but our district has made steps over the past few years to make changes to in-service days. I remember when I began teaching 18 years ago I would sit and get in lectures and in-services devised to “provide me with information necessary to […]
Posted inClassroom Management, Featured, Instruction & Curriculum
Let Them Think!
A few years ago I had a student in my classroom with a scrappy personality who was unafraid to speak his mind. One day, towards the end of the year, my fourth graders were working and one student came up and asked me an obvious question. From across the room Mr. Scrappy yells, “She’s not […]
Posted inFeatured, Instruction & Curriculum
Habits of Mind: Questioning and Posing Problems Through Summer Reflection
“To be or not to be, that is the question” — William Shakespeare. [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”] As the school year ends and we move into summer there are things we do as educators and […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
The Art of the Question
In an ever changing educational field, we have one tool in our belts that spans all geography, all ages, all subjects and all children-questioning. There is a dice game called Petals around a Rose. It is a simple game in which players roll any number of dice and the objective of the game is to […]
Posted inParents, Uncategorized
Can I Answer That? Questioning For Parents
As parents, we answer a million questions a day, sometimes more. Questions like: Why? Can I have…? Where are my…? But as a parent do you ever think of turning the tables? Sometimes the best answer to a question is another question. Asking your child questions will increase their self-awareness and encourage them to be problem-solvers in their […]