Lesson 2:Enhancing Student Assessment: Designing Thoughtful Questions Rubric
Overview
In this lesson you will learn how to...
- analyze ways to enhance student assessment with the support of the “Designing Thoughtful Questions” rubric.
Read/View
* Where We Came From and Where We're Going...
In our last lesson, we analyzed ways in which we can provide support for our struggling readers and writers during the questioning design of the QFT. Now we will learn how to take it a step further to push our students in designing powerful questions.
* The Push for Assessment and Academic Rigor...
As educators, we are aware that assessment and rigor are just two of the many buzzwords we hear in the education field. A highly effective classroom consists of students assessing their own work, and being able to do so in a rigorous manner by working with challenging tasks.
The QFT alone can be rigorous and is very much student-led in terms of assessment. However, how can we guarantee that our students will design their most powerful questions? After all, these questions will most likely be used for future instruction. We want to make sure they meet the standards of the types of questions that WE as teachers would ask our students. This means that we need to teach our students the ability to distinguish a powerful question between a not-so-powerful question. Like with many other forms of assessment, the use of a rubric and checklist can work wonders.
Solutions:
- A: Provide a rubric with criteria to represent a question that would merit a score of 1,2,3, or 4- similar to the scoring system that students see on the NYS Writing Rubrics. Click on Solution A for full image...
- B: Provide a checklist that guides students in designing a powerful question or revising one of their questions to make it better. Click on Solution B for full image...
Important Tips To Keep in Mind...
- As with anything new, students are more likely to be successful in using these tools during their assessment if teachers model how to use these tools during their assessment. It is important to do the following when first exposing students to these beneficial tools:
- Break down the parts of the rubric.
- Explicitly model examples of questions that would earn scores of 4,3,2, and 1.
- When showing students the checklist, take one of the model questions that scored lower than a 4, and use it to show how you would enhance it to make it a 4 by going through all parts of the checklist. Have students actively participate as you model to make sure they are following along!
Remember: Your role is to be the "facilitator"...
However, in order for students to be successful and independent, sometimes a little modeling through the use of exemplars is necessary!
Note
Since this is a collaborative class, everyone is encouraged to share their thoughts, ideas, and/or questions through our discussion board on Google Classroom!
Click here to access our discussion board
Reflect
- Where in the QFT would you include the use of these materials?
- What would be the best way to model how to use the materials?
Do
- Click the link below that will bring you to our Google Classroom.
- Complete Unit 3: Enhancing the QFT by Implementing Best Practices / Lesson 2: Activity 1 (Practice analyzing questions and applying the language of the rubric to help you assess the scores)
- Complete Unit 3: Enhancing the QFT by Implementing Best Practices / Lesson 2: Activity 2 (Teacher exemplar: Review a QFT lesson in which the teacher explicitly models how to complete each step of the QFT and the use of the rubric and checklist as a guide in question design)
Look Forward
Next lesson, you will participate in the QFT process as a student with the support of your classmates!
Move on to: Unit 4: Your Turn! Design Your Own QFT Lesson and Test It Out
Go back to: Stimulating Student Curiosity with the QFT (Question Formulation Technique)