This is your last assignment for this course...all assignments are due 3/13...thanks for participating!!!
Assignment #10: Complete the 4 part assignment format as you read, reflect, and respond to Chapter 10: Cues, Questions and Advance Organizers.
Remember: Although your course packet asks you to post to blog for parts A, B, C, and D…we are asking that you only post part C and D. We’re trying to make the blog easier to read and more user- friendly. Thanks!
A. Self Assessment of Current Beliefs and Practices: This component asks you to reflect on how and why you currently use the instructional strategy of Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers in your classroom. The intent of this is to activate your prior knowledge of your strategy use so that you can make comparisons as you read the chapter. Below are the questions to help you complete your self-assessment.
• What is your purpose of using cues and questions in your classroom?
• Study the research results in Figure 10.1 for "Cues and Questions." In your experience, what makes some experiences with cues and questions better than others?
B. Read & Reflect “Research & Theory”: This portion of the assignment asks you to read chapter 10 and reflect briefly on your thinking after reading the “Research and Theory” section for Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers. You may want to consider the point below in your reflection.
• Many teachers who are aware of the research on the use of "wait time" will confess that they do not use it often enough. What do you think are some of the reasons that might explain why teachers do not use this strategy systematically and effectively?
C. Practice: Choose one of the specific “classroom practice” strategies or techniques shared in this chapter to try out with your students (If you are not currently teaching, you may share how you would use this strategy in your classroom). Please post a brief reflection of how this went to the posting labeled Week Ten: Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers. Click on the “comment” link below.
D. Final Strategy Reflection: Use the following sequence of questions/prompts to reflect on what you’ve learned about both the strategies presented in the chapter and what you’ve learned about yourself as both a teacher and a learner. Please post your brief reflection to the posting labeled Week Ten: Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers by clicking on the “comment” link below.
How has the information you read in this chapter on Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers effected your thinking about teaching and learning? What have you learned about yourself as a teacher and learner? Use the following questions to assist you in writing a brief strategy reflection:
• Research confirms that advance organizers are powerful when they help students focus on what is important, not on what might be unusual. All the different types of advance organizers described in this chapter, however, require up-front planning on the part of the teacher. How would you respond to a teacher who complains that there just isn't time to prepare the organizers?
• What will you do to improve the effect of using cues, questions, and advance organizers in your classroom? – Will you make changes?
• How might you monitor the effects of cues, questions, and advance organizers on student learning?
9 comments:
C:
I want to try using questions that elicit inferences. While I use many cues and questions on a daily basis I really liked the idea of having pre-made questions that my students could answer both written and then orally to help them describe a person, place, event or thing that they are learning about. Often my students have a hard time starting their thinking process and these are a great way to help jump start their learning. One specific example would be during a lesson about people in our community or what the students want to be when they grow up. Having these types of questions for students to answer would make the students take a more in depth look at the occupation and what is expected of the person. I might even try to add some analytic questions into the lessons such as the questions analyzing perspectives to get a discussion going about why they think a particular occupation is a good choice for them.
D:
I can commiserate with a teacher who believes that there just isn’t enough time to prepare the organizers for a lesson. However I would point out that there is a lot of pre-made advanced organizers out there already created and with just a bit of tweaking could probably fit the teacher’s purpose. If they want to create their own that’s great too, and many advanced organizers would not take too much time to make, especially the narrative, and graphic organizers.
That being said, my experience as a learner leads me to caution anyone from just using the narrative advance organizer. I am a visual learner as are many of my students. If someone were to just read me a personal story I would not get as much out of it as I would if I had it in front of me to read myself. Personally the expository advance organizer seems the best way to help me prepare so it does not surprise me that it has the largest effect size. For those students who need something pictoral I think the example of the skimming advance organizer is great and would only take a couple of minutes to prepare. I think the idea of creating these things is overwhelming but when we start to look at exactly what we would need it seems much more manageable.
I already use cues, questions and advance organizers in my classroom on a daily basis. However, I would like to improve on the type of questions I am asking as well as using more expository, and skimming advance organizers. When I think about it I do not use enough higher level questions in my classroom and I have a list of ones that would be perfect. I am going to strive to post that in my room and use them every other day if not daily. Perhaps I will have my students use one as their ‘ticket out of class’. I also find that I use a lot of graphic organizers and narrative advance organizers and think my students would benefit from more expository and skimming organizers. I know that students learn differently and I need to start providing more options for them so that all students have the best opportunity possible to learn and retain the information I’m teaching.
Finally, when it comes to monitoring the effects that cues, questions, and advance organizers have on my students’ learning I am not quite sure how this will look. I suppose I will use a lot of teacher observation and keep track of their level of understanding during discussions. I will need to read over the other posts for more ideas as I am a little unsure about this.
C.
I use Cues, Questions and Advance Organizers in my social studies classroom quite often, but I would like to improve in some of my techniques. I definitely will increase my wait time when posing a question to the class. I don’t always do that and am now more aware of the effectiveness of allowing for “think time” for all levels of learners. I tried the strategy of adding more wait time and it was awkward at first. The students weren’t sure what to do. Normally, if students don’t answer right away, I pose a follow up question trying to clarify. This time I just waited a little bitter longer and I was able to elicit some very good responses.
I plan on continuing to use narrative advance organizers. Middle school students love it when they can kick back and listen to a story even about someone in history. It helps my students to connect to historical figures if they can learn about their life before we talk about their historical significance.
I plan on continuing to use analytic questioning in my social studies class. This goes along with my earlier blog mentioning that I am continuously asking the question, “What if?” As mentioned and known, history is only accurate to the person living it, and we don’t always get the real history of the participants. So it is important to rely on past knowledge to be able to use imagination when it comes to history as it is taught. History is linear so we also need to have background on what happened prior to the unit we are on and imagine what is to come following the unit.
D.
After reading this chapter on the effects of cues, questions and advance organizers, I am very happy with what I am currently doing in my classroom. I can make improvements, but it is nice to know that research supports what I am currently practicing. As an educator, there are always ways and opportunities to improve in our teaching. We need to make use of strategies that support student learning and use the strategies that are proven, by data, to be effective. I understand and have used the excuse that I just don’t have the time to prepare advance organizers, but I am reminded that we have to make the time to make our students successful within our curriculum. As a visual learner, I am grateful for graphic advance organizers in my past education, and can appreciate the effect of expository and narrative advance organizers for the auditory learners.
I think the best way of monitoring the effectiveness of cues, questions, and advance organizers on student learning is by observing the level of engagement by the students, by the quality of work they produce and ultimately how they score on tests. You can tell who is “with you” and who is not. Good quality work is easy to recognize and score and numbers on test scores don’t lie. ☺
Assignment #10: Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers
C. I started learning about “activating prior knowledge” when I first did a GLAD training, and then went on to get my ESOL endorsement. The constant message was to connect new information to what they already knew. This was an “aha” for me 7 years ago that this was not only good practice for my English learners, but for ALL of my students regardless of the topic. Even as an adult as soon as I can make a connection from prior knowledge to new knowledge I start taking in the new knowledge much faster. It brings the filter down for what is confusing or what is just brand new information. The cues and/or questions when used strategically can do the same thing. If they can get the learner engaged and thinking about the topic before the new information is being taught the student is ready to actually learn the new information instead of just process it. As mentioned in the blog already—I too need to remind myself about wait time. Silence can be unnerving, but kids need time to process, and dig through what they already know. If they don’t know the answer to the question it still gives them time to start laying a foundation for the new information that is headed their way. I love the lists of questions to pull from. The book points out that instead of asking “unusual” or “interesting” questions to try to pull the student into the lesson—I’ve guilty of this!—to instead ask basic questions about critical, and necessary information. I also like the concept of using a graphic organizer to introduce new information—like an introduction. I often used graphic organizers, I’m a very visual learner myself, but usually I have already introduced the information and the organizer is used to categorize the newly learned content.
D. In regards to the visual organizers and the teacher complaining about not having time to create them—there are a lot of resources to pull from: other teachers, reading materials (our adoption has a whole book of them available as a resource), and of course online. The internet provides A LOT of resources for teachers once you start hunting for things. I think the greatest challenge would be creating quality questions and/or ques to open up the topics and/or lessons with. It’s one thing to come up with basic ones to get the thoughts rolling, but I feel the extra challenge now for creating “high quality” ones to really get to the meat of the content. However, the chapter offers a lot of examples broken down by type, so like the support materials we offer our students to get them started (teacher created outlines, sentences starters, modeling, etc) I think the chapter would be a good place to start, and then it would become more routine when creating a new unit lesson introduction. In order to monitor the effectiveness of using these new tools I would track test results on the content taught, but also the level of student participation and interest. The more confident my students are the more willing to participate and openly discuss a topic. I would predict the ques, questions, and graphic organizers would offer scaffolding support for the students, and in turn give them the safety net allowing them to be more engaged in the learning process.
Chapter 10 C. I implemented the strategy cues and questioning with my fourth graders this week. I have 24 students for a 30 minute block of math intervention. I have several ELL students in the class. For three days this week we reviewed the concept of multiplying two digit numbers using compatible numbers. There were several steps involved and a lot of discussing about our thinking as we solved each problem. Before each lesson this week I wrote down several questions that would cue the students in the process and ask them to think more rather than me giving them step by step directions each time. I had already spent time modeling and practicing together and now wanted to take them to the next level of solving together with them explaining their thinking and processing of the math problem. I seemed to do well with stopping and asking the questions of why are we doing this or making a prediction but, what was hardest for me was the wait time before expecting an answer. Their homeroom teacher had already spend two days for 45 minutes each day covering this objective so these students were really needing time to process and practice. It was so difficult to wait and not jump in and say now you… or which part is confusing? Most of the students could come up with a why or next step if they were given time to look at the problem, and process it quietly. It occurred to me that I was expecting them to be quick at solving rather than mastering the skill with accuracy. This was the strategy that I need the most work on with all students but especially so since out school has a significant population of ELL students who need more think/wait time to process the language. Given my personality I don’t always give the students a chance to process and respond without cueing them too much or too quickly.
D. In this chapter I learned more about how to used advance organizers and work through the process backwards. I also reviewed what I knew about questioning and cueing students to show their learning and to help them process through their learning. The prior knowledge that was discussed on page112 reminded me of my SIOP and GLAD training and how I could be using those strategies daily with questioning to lead into a new skill. I like having the guidelines for cues and questions on pages 113-114 that I can refer to when I need to take students to another level in their learning or to intentionally plan into each lesson. I agree with the book in that “cueing and questioning are at the heart of classroom practice” but, I believe I can structure my cues and questions to get students thinking more and at a higher level of Bloom’s within more lessons each day.
C. Questioning is a common practice in a health classroom, so much so that I feel I may be one of the teachers discussed on page 113 who think they ask a dozen questions and are actually asking several dozen! I try to ask a wide variety of questions, some that have a ‘right’ answer and many that are just to get a consensus of opinion. I try to use questions as my ‘hook’ to catch their interest, but this chapter is clear that I should be asking questions that are more geared towards specific knowledge and use them to pinpoint the ‘main ideas’.
D. Advance organizers are wonderful tools. As a teacher who constant feels ‘under the gun’ due to time constraints both personally and professionally, I do have to work to find the balance between the time spent accessing prior knowledge and the time spent to develop additional knowledge. I have never regretted the time I have put into ‘front-loading’ an idea or concept though, my results have ALWAYS justified that dedication. As more teachers try this technique I think they too will recognize that the time commitment is not as extensive as they feared, because when you activate the prior knowledge by using an advance organizer, students ‘get’ so much more out of the lessons or activities you can spend less time reteaching or reviewing a subject.
I love that my textbook is set up with a ‘Guide to Reading’ that starts every lesson with a list of important vocabulary terms and a list of main ideas. This is the perfect way for my students to cue in on what they should really be listening to and focusing on. Before they even start reading, they know the information they should have when we are done. I have found that it is infinitely easier for students to recall this same information after reading because of this.
C. This chapter is all about “activating prior knowledge.” This is a skill that I try to incorporate into many of my lessons. KWL charts are used before a new science unit (I’m not sure why I tend to only do this for a science unit, perhaps I should expand its use to other subjects), our reading program has a “building background” section built into it, and in math and writing I’m often building on what they’ve learned in an early lesson or their prerequisite skills. I liked the generalization that they listed in this chapter, “waiting briefly before accepting responses from students has the effect of increasing the depth of students’ answers.” One way that I do this is to have students give a thumbs up in front of their chest when they have something to say. This way they don’t have their arms up in front of others, making them feel like they should have an answer right away. Some students just need a longer amount of think time before they have something to say. One of the advance organizers that I use is the skimming strategy. In reading, whenever we have a new story to read, I have students look through the book at the chapter titles, the pictures, read any captions or maps that may be included and if there is a glossary to glance through that as well. We will often discuss what we see and make predictions about what we think will happen. There are times as well, especially with fiction writing, that we will print out articles related to the topic. These are often included as work in the unit, but could be moved to the front of the unit as a pre-teaching tool. The example used in the book for skimming was given before a field trip, I think this would be great to incorporate into our field trips this year, especially with me being new to the grade and also the field trips. This helps to both activate their prior knowledge and hopefully to increase their interest in the trip as well.
D. After reading this chapter, I feel that I use these techniques in a basic form, but could also take it further. These strategies do require some pre-planning, but I think if we are doing our job and know our content, then this strategy will be something that we just incorporate into our planning of each unit. Again, our job is to make sure our students understand the content as best we can, and pre-teaching could help with that. As Molly said, there are several sources to pull from, use what you can find, we don’t have to “recreate the wheel” every time. I will continue to look for different ways to introduce topics to my students in ways that will better help them to understand and reach a higher level of thinking and learning.
Hello Everyone!
Kelsey, teaching students text features in order for them to skim articles as an advance organizer is a very worthwhile unit! Your reminders that there are ready-made materials that teachers can tweak are helpful for time-pressed teachers. Plus really considering what it is that we want our students to know and understand before actual instruction makes our lessons stronger and better designed.
Therese, I have a note in the margin of my book about wait time as well. Even though we have all been teaching for a while, it's still important to remind ourselves of activating prior knowledge and providing wait time. :) Higher-order questioning continues to come up in many different areas. Having some reminders or premade questions is a helpful strategy to use to ensure that we incorporate them into our lessons.
Hi Molly, You mentioned another point that I had highlighted in my book... comment on the important information, not the unusual. I'm sure we've all done this, in an effort to interest our students in a topic, but it makes sense to point out the important facts rather than the unique ones. Another good reminder I found myself considering. I also agree with you that these methods do provide the support many students need in order to feel secure and be more fully involved in the lessons.
Hello Christi,
Wait time is sometimes uncomfortable but the more we do it the more the students benefit and become use to it and the more natural it feels to us. This may sound silly, but what I do when I realize that I'm rushing students or not providing enough wait time is count in my head. (to 15 works for me.) I find if I'm counting then I'm not going to blurt the question out in another way or call on the first person to raise their hand. Again, as adults we read, write, think and process much faster than the children. We need to slow down and remember that they are learning and developing these skills and their mastery or understanding may not correlate with our 45 min. period or some scope and sequence that says we now need to be studying the Civil War. :)
Erica, Great point on the time issue. I also feel that students are able to get much more out of a lesson when we front load them so that you are in fact spending less time reteaching or reviewing. Which in the end, may work out to being the same amount of time either way. :)
Hi Renee,
I think using KWL charts in other subjects is a great idea. There are several different versions of a KWL, one that I like is a KWLS... with the S being "Still Want to Know." I find that with learning, once you learn about something other questions continue to pop up, so the cycle keeps going.
Teaching primary students how to read we often do a "picture walk" like what you describe doing with your students. Skimming for the older grades is similar to "picture walks." :)
Thanks everyone. We've enjoyed having you in class this term. You've all completed the requirements for the course and earned an A. Have a great rest of your year!
Mary and Jackie
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