Application questions

I've noticed that students are much more apt to apply knowledge/create application questions.  When were learning about circuits last week, Davontae raised his hand and said, "Mr. Welch I'm going to make a uh...(looks up at Bloom's Taxonomy chart) an application.  When I saw my dad jump our car, he had to put one of the wires on either side of the battery.  That's like what we did with the circuit."  In social studies we were studying the Freedom Rides when Tyshaun asked: "I wonder how are the Freedom Rides similar to the sit-ins?"

observations about kayla and jaymon's progress

Kayla and Jaymon are the other two members of the lowest guided reading group (Donte and Deavion are the other 2 members), and I have noticed some things about their reading in the last month that reflects improvement. As mentioned in the previous post, Kayla is autonomously generating questions about her book (her partner readers may have helped facilitate/model this process), and is looking for the answers as she reads. She's tracking questions as she reads! Another example of this came about when I conferred with her. She said: "I got this question I keeping thinking about. Why does she keep getting mad?". I think this question shows that she's thinking deeply about the character that she's reading: she's noticing a character trait, and noticing it consistently across many scenes in the book, AND most importantly, she's looking for reasons/clues why she is this way. She is analyzing. Jaymon actually researched Martin Luther King Jr. at home, and told me on the following morning about some of the facts that he'd learned. During independent reading, he's reading much more cognitively and intensely. He's observing things in the text that weren't even on his radar at the beginning of the year. For example, as he was reading "Martin's Big Words" he noticed that MLK's words were given a special font and print, and he thought about why the author did this (author's craft). Also, he volunteered his favorite part of the story about how MLK chose a nonviolent approach for the Civil Rights Movement.

observations on questioning and research during independent reading

One thing I've noticed is that students are really engaged to research. Olajuwon, Jaymon, Tyshaun, and Donte are constantly asking me if they can research during independent reading. I wonder what gets them so psyched for it? As this GR group was reading, they were asking questions that definitely showed they're starting to move up Bloom's taxonomy and ask higher order questions. Tyshaun: Is this an important date? Rashad: Why do they love to hook up their spaceships to others? I'm seeing them stop and think a lot more about: -what Apollo 11, 10, 9, etc. were, and why they are named that way -why they do countdowns before lifting off -how astronauts train -the purpose of rockets and where they go when disconnected -what creates gravity Guided reading group Illinois (Shimya, Antwanay, Sunshine, and Brianna) came up with these questions about the same text: -Why do they have to practice in a fake spacecraft? -Why did they have to hook spacecraft onto other spacecraft? -Why is it so important for them to go to outer space? I notice that this group asked understanding and analyzing questions. It's so much better that they're coming up with these questions because they're a lot more invested in finding their own answers. There's a lot of ownership here. Students will also frequently return to questions: Kayla inferred that Libby was older than another character in her Judy Blume book because in the text Libby was worried about going to 5th grade. I was so pumped when she told me this during a conference during independent reading because she had brought up that question with her partner readers the previous day. So she must have been reading and intentionally looking for the answer to that question so that she could better understand the text. Along similar lines, Shimya said: "I know where they're going (points to map on back) but I want to know what they do at these places, what do they find, what's the mystery?" Alex has 2 pages of great questions about Edward Tulane

All of these examples show how questions can be a critical scaffold to understanding of text. It gives them more of a purpose and focus as they read the text, it prompts them to investigate and really think about what they read. Riana: We were making a timeline because we didn't understand some of the stuff so we went back.

questions on the Freedom Riders

Examples of questions that they self-generated after learning about the freedom riders: -What would you do if you was a freedom rider? -Why did white people decide to be freedom riders? -Why didn't white freedom riders fight back? -Why did the police leave the freedom riders? -Where was MLK and Rosa Parks during this time? -Were they able to escape? -Why did they beat the black people up just coming in stores? -What was on the black minds with all these unequal rights? -Why are they called Freedom Riders? -Did the Freedom Riders know MLK? -Did that man help all the people off the burning bus? -Why did they burn that bus during segregation? -Why did the white people beat up another white? -Could white freedom riders fight back? -Why did they hate us because of the color of our skin? +I have a theory that as student knowledge of some content progresses, so does the average level of their questions on Bloom's Taxonomy. To test this out, I should ask them to generate more questions about the Civil Rights Movement when we're done studying it. +I wish they would ask deep questions about the overarching themes of the 1960's Civil Rights Movement, like how and why the activists used non-violent resistance, and what the advantages and disadvantages of this ethos were. Do I need to step in and just ask them this? Next time I teach this unit, I'll be sure to do a few lesson on Ghandi and non-violent resistance to build prior knowledge.