A Question of Questions...

Some students seem to hate or fear answering questions.

Sometimes I don't blame them.

Some of them clealry like asking questions, even though it's clear school has beaten it out of them a bit.

One of my favourite sounds in a classroom is, "Stewart... Can I ask a question? It's probably a bit off-topic..."

See, "...it's probably a bit off-topic..." is music to my ears, 'cause it often means "...it's about something I actually want to know about..." or, more succinctly, "...I'm interested..."

I think next week I'm going to be making a more concerted effort to show / do / say things which will make them ask questions (no, not like that...) instead of showing them stuff and expecting them to answer questions.

In the Money...

(I know I've only just posted the last thing a minute ago, and it went on forever, but when it comes to the triad of time to write this blog, motivation to write this blog and ideas I want to post here, I've got to strike while the iron is hot)

A different stimulus I've used in the past as a skills / confidence-developing "starter" in the same vein as the map thing is the Billion Pound O Gram from David McCandless's lovely site, Information Is Beautiful:

I've found lots of stuff on or through Information Is Beautiful which have provided different ways of looking at ideas and have been useful for me and for students in a variety of situations.

McCandless's page of Google NGram Experiments has provided food for thought for A2 English Language students looking at diachronic change (or investigating things for their coursework), and it was through Information Is Beautiful that I found a link to this brilliant little investigation on parenting blog, The Achilles Effect, which was a methodology just begging to be adopted / adapted into someone's coursework data investigation.

Mapping it Out...

A thing I tried this week:

With my two GCSE resit classes, I ran a lesson where I specifically stated at the start of the hour that we wouldn't be reading any English and we wouldn't be writing anything longer than a couple of bullet points.
I also stressed, however, that we'd be using skills that we could then use next week when faced with some tricky English to analyse and write about.

I then showed them an upside-down map of the world, a bit like this one:

(the one I used didn't have the title "Upside Down World Map" on it, though - more on that point in a bit)

I asked them to spend a couple of minutes looking at / thinking about the image without speaking (challenging for some) and to write down in very brief note form any thoughts that occurred to them - be those thoughts single words, statements, questions or whatever.

I then asked each member of the group in turn to say something about it to the rest of us. Rather pleasingly, many of the comments fell nicely into the following catagories:

1) Opinions - Things like -  

- "Makes me want to save up money so I can go to all the countries when I'm older,"

- "Makes me realise just how small we [in Britain] really are,"

- "That's seriously blagging my head!"

- Even (surprise) "It's boring / stupid"

- All drawing attention to the fact that when we analyse something, one of the first things we consider is the effect it has on us. How does it make us feel? What's the effect on the audience? (Nb, after a perfectly civil discussion, it was conceeded that it was not the map that was "boring," but being in college that morning)

2) Questions about the stimulus -

- "Russia's not really right next to Alaska, though, is it?"

- "Where is England anyway?"

- "What's that huge bit there?"

- or (for some) the breakthrough "Is it upside down?"

(I know... sometimes I need a reminder about things I take for granted not necessarily being common knowledge for the students)

- I thought this was great - the number of questions they were asking, all of which then provoked responses from the other members of the class, all of which lead to someone understanding the thing in front of them a bit more. Couldn't help comparing this to the times I stand in front of them and ask them the questions I think they ought to be asking.

3) Questions about the task -

- "Isn't this Geography? Why are we doing it in English?"

- "What's the point in showing us this?"

- As scary as they may feel to hear, I think these questions are great (especially as I had decent answers prepared in this particular case) and I think it's something academically "weaker" kids will do a lot more willingly than supposedly "more capable" students in my experience. Questioning the purpose of the exercise shows that they want to find a value in what they're doing.

The student who asks "What's the point...?" may sound disaffected or aggressive, but surely they're actually looking to the teacher, the person who claims they know what they're doing, for reassurance that their time and effort isn't being wasted.

Of course, if we can't give them a straight answer, if we can't explain to them why they need to be able to write 1,000 words about Wilfred Owen's poetry, or why they ought to role-play a scenario of a real-life context or give a Powerpoint presentation on their ambitions in front of their peers and a teacher with a mark-scheme, then we might be learning something ourselves.

4) Statements about the stimulus - 

- "It looks wierd that way up,"

- "Canada looks massive when you see it like that,"

- (in response to "It's upside down") "I suppose there is no upside-down when you're actually on the Earth, though, is there? It's just what you're used to seeing on maps."

- (my favourite moment out of both classes), "Look at how many of the countries in the South are the poor countries you never hear about!"

- All with minimal prompting from me. All without any fear of sounding stupid. All showing such insight. I was impressed with them.

Now, in that session, the majority of those students demonstrated the ability to do the following things:

a) Respond articulately to a previously unseen stimulus;

b) Pick out details from a large, complicated stimulus and discuss them to increase their understanding of the stimulus as a whole;

c) Use question-asking (as opposed to just question-answering) to increase their understanding of a stimulus and take their analysis in original directions which interest them;

d) Support one-another with constructive responses to others' questions;

e) Consider the effect of a stimulus on more than one audience / Consider more than one reading of the same "text";

f) Show no fear of being "wrong" or looking "stupid" - Several responses were prefaced with "This is going to sound stupid, right..." but that's so much better than feeling stupid and not saying anything (and the ideas themselves weren't stupid at all)

When I pointed that out to them, some of them seemed quite pleased about the whole thing.

Now, if I can just work out how to get that same thing happening when they're presented with "some old poem" or a transcript of "that weird, boring guy talking,"* we'll be well away...

*Is it just teenagers who reject things which confuse or intimidate them by claiming they're somehow both weird and boring at the same time?

Ken Robinson Thing

It Begins...

New day. New blog.

An attempt to collect and muse upon a whole bunch of stuff about teaching, learning, education, putting skills and ideas into the minds of ourselves and others.

I'm Stewart. I'm a teacher who's trying to work out how to stop just teaching and get the guys staring up at me to start learning.

I'll be using this blog to develop my own ideas on educational praxis and as a place where I can hopefully learn from other people, too.