So I am going to be totally cheesy and ask an authentic question about authentic questions. I found it interesting on page 124 in Strategies That Work that the authors suggest to explicitly state that, as a teacher, to inform your students what kind of question you are asking ("this is an assessment question" or "this is an authentic question"). How do you, HEEL Tigers, feel about this and what makes you think that?
To me, it seems very unnatural to inform the class of what kind of question you are asking, especially when it comes to assessment question. I know the book suggests to tell the kids "I know the answer to this question. I'm asking it to check to see if you do." I personally think this method is a little forced. If anything, I tend to take the opposite approach and kind of "play dumb." For instance, I'll ask "what's the genre of writing where they use magic. I often get it confused with science fiction, but it usually involves wizards. Can anyone help me remember what that genre is called?" Maybe I feel this way because I'm a novice teacher but telling the students explicitly that "I know the answer" feels very strange. What are your guys thoughts? What kind of questions do you feel yourself posing? I probably am heavily posing assessment questions. Does anyone have a suggestion how I could pose more authentic questions? Consider all subjects too, like math. Hopefully we can come up with something interesting.
I intentionally kept this initial post short so we could strike up some sort of dialogue. If anyone feels like we have exhausted this topic, feel free to pose another question from the reading. I was torn between this and posing a question from visualization. If we talk at length about this, maybe I'll ask that question later in the week as well.
Lucas, I could not agree more with your observations about the awkwardness of explicitly pointing out when you are asking students an assessment question. The authors say "why fake it?", but I say "why not"? In my opinion, students might be much more inclined to offer up a response to a question in which they believed their teacher did not know the answer. Can you imagine how exciting it would be from a student's point of view to inform their teacher about "unknown" information? I have actually seen many exchanges like this take place in my math classroom. My MT does a lot of think-alouds as she solves problems on the board. There are times when she purposely makes mistakes in her reasoning, stops, and wonders aloud "Wait...I think something is wrong here. What did I do wrong?" Immediately following this, students volunteer more quickly than any other time during math class. They are eager to correct the teacher's mistake and help her figure out where she went wrong. This is a strategic way to check up on students' understanding of a topic- which the authors would classify as an assessment question.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to asking more authentic questions, I think the key is that we, as teachers, need to be willing to spend more time discussing one topic in great detail. It's easy for us to simply call on students to provide a correct answer and move on, but this is not an effective way to advance thinking. If we devote more discussion time to asking the probing questions, students will be challenged to think on a deeper level. This calls for a heavy focus on the "why?" questions rather than the who, what, when, where, how's.
Interesting that that part of the reading didn't stand out too much for me when I was skimming the chapter, but after I read your post and the section again, I totally understand where you're coming from; however, I think after I reread it a few times, I interpreted that section differently.
ReplyDeleteI think the section is trying to distinguish AUTHENTIC questions from ASSESSMENT questions in the eyes of students because they are in fact very different types of questions with very different uses.
The text seems to say their is a need for assessment questions purely for use by the teacher and for the purpose of assessing what students know (obviously). I think we all agree assessment questions in some form are an important tool for effective teaching. According to the text, this is very different from an authentic question which a teacher can use and model, but is also a very important strategy for students to use to help foster their own learning.
I think there is totally a time to "play dumb" as you put it--I especially like using it in math when very specific algorithms must be followed and making common errors engages students in pointing out what I'm doing wrong and helps them avoid the same errors--yet with reading comprehension, I would feel less comfortable playing dumb. I would much rather stick to authentic questioning which gives students exposure to literally an authentic use of a comprehension strategy, then separately asking students assessment questions, which they will understand there is more or less a correct answer that I'm expecting them to have learned as a result of what we've been doing.
Does that make sense or was this what you were saying too?
Hannah, you did a good job on explaining your thinking during this section. I agree with your sentiment about distinguishing the types of questions from the students' perspectives. I guess I am just hung up on blatantly saying "I am now going to ask you an assessment question." Granted, it is probably a minute detail that I am blowing out of proportion but it just feels weird to me. I do like the examples the book provided about starting authentic questions, however. Those prompts seem natural to me. Could we come up some ways to make assessment questions feel less forced? Or does it matter, since Harvey and Goudvis' whole point is that there are too many assessment questions? Am I focusing on the wrong thing here? I feel like I'm focusing on the wrong thing. Bummer.
DeleteYou also bring up a good point, Hannah, about the "playing dumb" conundrum (or, "conDUMBdrum," if you will). Reading what you wrote made me consider how that practice might cloud students' understanding if I did it at the wrong time. I like how you said, Richardson, that you have seen it work during math lessons, which seems like a more appropriate place for it (as you have both pointed out). Authentic questioning can definitely help us out, as teachers, to understand our students' learning development. It also provides an avenue for students themselves to develop and track their own learning.
Feel free to add on, question, or completely change the subject. I enjoyed reading both these posts in order to think about my original thinking. I'll continue to mull this over...