Lesson 3: How can I plan effective questions in my lesson?
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Objective
Participants will create a lesson that incorporates effective questioning strategies.
Introduction
The goal of this lesson is for participants to write a lesson plan that effectively integrates questioning strategies to deepen student understanding. The content for this unit focuses on the importance that planning questions ahead of time plays in the delivery of content and the making of meaning. The past two lessons have focused on how to design and implement an effective question, but without proper planning, neither of those things would be possible. Consider this, do you think you would be able to ask a well-written question on the fly? Without writing the question in advance and planning when and how to implement it, the question would not be nearly as effective as one that was properly planned.
In this lesson, please participate in the warm up and investigation sections before completing your lesson plan. After completing your lesson plan, upload it to the shared Google Folder and comment on a peer's plan. It is crucial that you write your plan before completing the reflection.
K-W-L Pre-Assessment
- Before you begin reading the content in Lesson 3, please make additions to the K-W-L chart. You should add a few comments describing how you think questions can be effectively planned into lessons in the "K" section of the chart. You can then brainstorm a few questions you have about planning effective questions and type them in the "W" section of the chart, indicating what you want to know.
Warm Up
As a warm up for this lesson, please think of a time when you delivered a lesson that was not effectively planned. In the page below, please record your experience and reflect on how the lack of effective planning led to the demise of that lesson. In your response, please also consider how ineffectively planning the questioning strategies you want to implement into a lesson might lead to ineffective implementation of those questions.
Investigation
As you access the links below, please take notes in your Journalate journal. The ideas and prompts to consider during your investigation should guide your note-taking.
1. Read the following blog post from a principal discussing the need to plan questions ahead of time. Consider if you agree with the ideas of this principal, and how her ideas can shape your own planning.
2. Read the following blog post from Edutopia where an administrator shares his thoughts on why questions should be planned with a purpose in a lesson. Recall the information from previous chapters that connects certain question stems with certain purposes. Please pay particular attention to the section "The Goal of a Question".
3. Watch the following video of an English teacher discussing her approach to structuring questions. Consider how the teacher uses questions to build on students' understanding and take their ideas deeper. Reflect deeply on whether this teacher could have as effective of a strategy if she had not planned these questions in advance. Consider how you can use a similar strategy by planning a structure like this in advance.
Lesson Plan Submission
After reviewing the links above and considering a lesson that you will teach in the upcoming week, write a lesson plan that incorporates effective questioning strategies based on what you have learned in the past three lessons. Write the plan based on the expectations that your university or district has, but incorporate specific strategies that will lead to effective questioning strategies.
Please upload your lesson plan to the folder below.
Leave comments on at least one peer's lesson plan by inserting comments on their plan in the folder.
Reflection
- After reviewing the previous links and writing your lesson plan, describe one reason that planning questions ahead of time is necessary followed by your name in the "L" section of the K-W-L chart. In addition, if you can answer any questions from the "W" section, please record these answers in the "L" section. If any new questions emerged after completing the "Investigation" portion of Lesson 3, you can add them to the "W" section.
- To reflect on this lesson with your peers, you should go to this website (https://todaysmeet.com/EffectiveQuestioningLesson3) and write one aspect, in terms of questioning, of your newly written lesson plan that differs from any lesson plans you've written previously.
Go on to Lesson 4: How can I use the feedback from students to deepen their thinking?
Return to Designing Effective Questions