Transforming Literature Circles with Bloom's Taxonomy at EL Conference

She uses "Bloom's Taxonomy Critical Questioning Guide" that has question starters that will broaden the types of questions that they ask (especially for lower level readers), but for higher thinkers she only let's them use it for a few days and then takes it away.

Goal: to vary questions and types of thinking students do.  What actually matters is the discussion.

Students are given a journal to write questions and answers at varying levels.  Their is a rubric which she uses to quickly evaluate the quality of their questions and answers.

Having students choose from a bank of questions (post-its displayed on several different tables that several groups already categorized) with the prompt of choosing the question that would lead to the best discussions. 

Kids have to be taught how to refer to text to answer questions.  Expertise lies in the text, the burden of proof is in the text.

There's no judgment on some levels being better than others, kids may need to ask questions on different levels.  I wonder are her literature circles heterogeneous or homogeneous?

How did your thinking about this book change just by asking questions and thinking about questions?
--> I had a much better understanding of what I didn't understand
--> it gets students prepared for the discussion, students aren't allowed into lit circle until they have

After lit circle, have students revise their answers?

Unit structures and resources:

• using bloom's to ask questions (2 lessons)
• lit circle journals (on-going)
• lit circle analysis (on-going)
• videotape lit circles, class would analyze how it went and what could be better
• group evaluation rubrics
• self evaluation rubrics
• NO INTERRUPTIONS!
• fishbowl lit circles
• clarifying vs. extending: arriving at a new understanding
• the difference: clarifying are lower level questions that are necessary for comprehensions

• how to answer questions (shallow vs. deep)
• using text evidence
• thinking metacognitively about your answers 

•  teacher's college reading and writing project has model video of lit circles

 Takeaways:

• use videotape modeling as a rational, unemotional tool to lift discussion
• use her template to make a journal for students' questions, perhaps also give them the questioning book as a resource to help them write questions.
• increase the amount of revision that occurs as they sift through questions and prioritize the best ones
• day 1: read and write questions
• day 2: lay out questions on post-its and do a gallery walk to select the 2-3 best questions that will lead to a good discussion.  Write them down, along with answers
• day 3: have discussion
• day 4: product?

• bookmarks with assigned reading for week (cute)

Questions:

• Should the product be tied to their questions? What should the products of lit circles be?
• How do you teach them to balance clarifying and extending questions?  Should the discussion be divided into one based on clarifying questions and one on extending?  Because the prompt "choose the question that will lead to the best conversation" is very different from "choose the question that will help you understand the story best" -->you can be flexible with this
• the tuning protocol and guiding questions protocol is on EL Commons
• What is the best way to get them to generate lots of questions at a variety of levels and then pair that down to 1-2 for discussion?--> in the beginning of the year she really helps them pair down and prioritize their questions, but eventually they get to the point where they don't need all of that broke down. 
• Are there ever any products that get produced from lit circle discussions? -->yes, but nothing specifically from their questions and answers in their journals
• Do you read and grade their journal entries every day? --> yes, very informally she walks around each morning and fills out the rubric.  students know that she will eventually collect their whole journals to do a summative assessment.

rounds of questioning discussion

So I'm looking through my students' questions that they jot down as they read Out of the Dust in explore groups, and I'm so thankful that students are asking and answering these questions as a first round before bringing the "cream of the crop", the higher quality, deeper questions.  Not that the questions they jotted down are "bad", they're just more about unknown words or miscomprehensions.

A few things I'm starting to think about...
1) having question masters prioritize one question per discussion, putting it in the think tank and leading Seminar with these questions.  Tried it on 2/12 by giving question masters one post-it after or as they were having their discussions.  Here's what was prioritized, put up in our think tank, and the first two were discussed during Seminar (the Qfocus was "the homeless family at Billie Jo's school"):

-Why is Billie Jo so eager to not let the baby go if that's not one of her family members.
-Why did the family leave the baby and thay had went to west.
-Why did the people move into the school
-Why didn't the homeless family go to a shelter?

We had a really good conversation around the first question, with students debating if and why the baby reminded Billie Jo of Franklin, her baby brother who died soon after being born. 



The second question was a productive discussion as well, first DQ had to revise and improve his question because he misunderstood that the family left the baby behind.  We talked about how many migrants tried to leave the Dust Bowl, especially to get to California.

On the following day 2/13, I gave them their Qfocus before dismissing them to their Explore Groups "Billie Jo and the Piano", and emphasized that question masters prioritize questions and put them into the think tank.  I was disappointed because several groups skipped the "question reflection" and "discussion" sections of the Explore Group schedule.  I understand they're excited about getting to their jobs, but it's important to have this discussion about questions because it clarifies misunderstandings and enriches their understanding which makes the products they produce in their explore group jobs better.  So I called them into Seminar early, and modeled how a question master would lead the discussion and prioritize the best question to put up in the Think Tank.  This connects to what was my second goal/push:

2) having question masters lead discussions in their groups around the questions from their questioning ladders

We'll see how they do today...

Question Master Questions - Week 3

Step 1 (Obvious Information):
- What does Billie Jo like most? (Kamari)
-What does Miss Freeland look like? What does Ms. Freeland call Billie Jo? (Malik)
-How does Billie Jo look? Who is the main character? (Donnell)
-What do Billi Jo like?  How do billi Jo look?  What is billJo frovite thing? (Nyrissa)

Step 2 (Key Detail):
-When is Billie Jo going to move out of the dust? (Kamari)
-Is Billie Jo still in school? Was Billie Jo's dad born in the dust bowl? (Malik)
-How did Billie Jo's mom die? (Donnell)
-What happened to billi Jo Mother? How did her brother die? (Nyrissa)

Step 3 (Stated Relationships):
-Who does Billie Jo look up to? (Kamari)
-If Miss Freeland is her ma at school why can't she bring to the house with her father?  What is the relationship between Billie Jo and her father? (Malik)
-How is Billie Jo's relationship with her father? (Donnell)
-Who does billie Jo become friend with in the dust bowl? (Nyrissa)

Step 4 (Connect Some Dots):
-Why does Billie Jo keep thinking about her mom? (Kamari)
-Why does Billie Jo want to be like her mom? (Malik)
-Why didn't Billie Jo go to school? Why did Billie Jo stick her face into the fog? (Donnell)
-When does the dust bowl stop.  Why does billie Jo still think about lily and lizzie. (Nyrissa)

Step 5 (Connect Lots of Dots):
-What job will Billie Jo get when she grows up? (Kamari)
-What are the 3 biggest ways Billie Jo changed over the course of the story? (Malik)
-How does Billie Jo change throughout the course of the story? Who is responsible for her changes?(Donnell)
-How did billie Jo change since her ma died. (Nyrissa)

Step 6 (Walking in the Author's Shoes):
-What is Karen Hesse trying to explane to us? (Kamari)
- (no response) (Malik)
-What message is Karen Hesse trying to send?  What are the best ways to handle anger? (Donnell)
-What message is Karen Hesse telling me about billie Jo's family and the dust bowl? (Nyrissa)

Step 7 (Reading like a Writer):
-Is Karen Hesse in love with poetry? (Kamari)
-Has she visited the Dust Bowl (Malik)
-What symbols does Karen Hesse include in the story about anger? (Donnell)
-How does Karen Hesse make her story better by using similes and alliteration? (Nyrissa)

Seminar questions about guiding questions:
-Who does Billie Jo look up to? (Kamari)
Malik: At first, she looked up to her mom before she died because that was the only woman in the house and when she grows up she wants to be like her mom.
DQ: ANd I think before Harold P. Nye died she probably looked up to him because he liked Billie Jo alot.
Demarrion: I think she looked up to herself because she be acting tough alot.
NYrissa: I agree with Demarrion and I sorta agree with Malik, but the reason I agree with Demarrion because in the book she hasn't really said anything positive about her mom

-Why does Billie Jo want to be like her mom? (Malik)
Omar: I think because her mom knew how to play piano and she wants to play piano.
Anyah: I agree.
Kamari: Didn't her mom ban her from playing the piano before she died.
Anyah: Not ban her, but remember in the book she asked her mom so she could say yes.
Malik: It says she didn't want her to play piano because she'd miss school so she just couldn't play during the week.
Me: synthesize ambivalent relationship between Billie Jo, searches for other reason...
Donnell: I think she wanted to be like her mom because she didn't know her dad that well
Dameko: I think she wanted to be her mom because she had bigger dreams and Billie Jo wants to leave the farm too.
Omar and Demarrion argue that she wants to be like her mom because her father's personality is abhorrent.
Me: I think she wants to hold on to her mom and remember her through the traits she shares with her.

questions from "Polar Bears and Global Warming" Qfocus

Initial Categorization (students from the top 3 guided reading groups were given 1 blue post-it each, students from the bottom 2 guided reading groups were given 1 orange post-it each):

 Final Categorization (after we discussed and possibly re-categorized questions in Socratic Seminar):

Some takeaways at a glance:
1) students were much more accurate with their categorizing this time around.  There were a couple of mis-categorized questions, but overall, and regardless of high or low reading ability, students were accurate.
2) 3 students actually generated applying questions, although 2 of them didn't realize it at first
3) Analyzing was again the most popular category of question, followed by evaluating.  The tank is pretty top-heavy, with very few understanding and remembering questions, which could suggest a number of things.  Maybe students had a good understanding of global warming and it's effect on polar bears, therefore they didn't need to ask remembering and understanding questions.  Maybe they felt challenged to ask higher level questions (although I gave no prompting, I only told students to choose the question that they felt was most important with the Qfocus).
4) Both the high readers' group and low readers' group have good parity and their questions are well-distributed among all 6 levels of thinking. 
5) High readers had a higher proportion of their questions be analyzing questions than the low readers.
6) Both high and low readers' initial categorizations skewed higher than their final (true) categorizations.

Their questions verbatim (the number of questions in some categories are not exactly identical to the number of post-its in the final picture of the fish tank; I think this is because in the heat of the discussion during Seminar, we just forgot to re-categorize certain questions):


 Remembering
-When did sentist discover global warming. (Tommy)

Understanding
-How do the ice melt so fast (Emon)
-How does the sun get in if everything is close? (Nyrissa)
-How does the sun light hust them if thay live on the top (DQ)

Applying
-how does riding bikes help Polar bears (Trae)
-Why is global warming effecting Polar Bears? (Darvell)

Analyzing
-Why won't the sientist try to get more ice in alaska. (Dameko)
-Why does Heat creat carbon dioxide that traps heat at mak global warming. (Syriah)
-Why do the Polar bears have to live in the cold. (Omar)
-Why are polar bears dieing? (Kamari)
-Why do we have carbon dioxide (Malik)
-If the tempature of the sun drops to 70 degrees F and on Earth we didn't have things that produced carbon dioxide and other gases would Global Warming exist? (Vianey)

Evaluating
-When all of the ice caps melt, will the polar bears eventually come to dry land? (Donnell)
-can Polar Bears find good home when the ice is melting? (Anyah)
-Will the Poler Bears sevaiv will they or will they not (Cyrus)
-Do polar Bears like there home? (Zion)

Creating
-How can I save the Polar bear (Kashira)
-Can we make things that move but do not ues gases (Demarrion)

To adequately discuss all of the questions, we had to break up our Socratic Seminar into two sessions on two separate days. 
On the 1st day, our conversation centered on Malik's question: "Why do we have carbon dioxide?" which he revised to "Do we need carbon dioxide?".  It was really interesting to hear students' synthesizing how carbon dioxide is a part of their life (in terms of how activities like driving in a car or playing videogames involve emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere).  Another facet of the conversation that Vianey's question ultimately dovetailed into was in what ways does carbon dioxide help make our life better (in terms of keeping the Earth relatively warm-the greenhouse effect makes the Earth warm enough to sustain life on Earth, the problem is that the greenhouse effect is becoming too strong as we pump more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere).  I thought it was positive to see that Malik revised his question during Seminar. 

On the 2nd day I was able to take more complete notes:
Kamari: Why are polar bears dying?
Tommy gives a fairly complete answer, connecting global warming to changes in the polar bears' habitat.
Kamari: Then I have another question: Why do polar bears have specific habitats?
Anyah: Polar bears have to live in the Arctic because if they don't they can't catch their favorite foods.
Darvell: Their bodies are made for extreme cold weather.
Dameko: Why won't the scientists make more ice in Alaska?
This leads to a great review of concepts that range from the states of matter, to the greenhouse effect.  It prompted a nice patch-up of some gaps in knowledge.
As we continue discussing questions, Dameko spontaneously corrects Syriah's categorization of her question, explaining that it's really an analyzing question.  I wonder at what point could students start to do what we're doing in Seminar autonomously?  Maybe I could add a session into our literature circle weekly schedule, when Question Masters (an official job in lit circles) could take their questions that they generated and lead a discussion around those questions...

saving the polar bears with questions?

Today we were going through morning meeting as usual and we're reading the morning message, which is about how we're going to learn how to help stop global warming and save the polar bears.  Dameko raised his hand and said: "Are we going to ask questions to help the polar bears?"  I was really confused, and I asked him what he meant: "I don't understand Dameko, how can questions help polar bears."  He said, "No, I mean are we going to put "polar bears" up there [pointing at the Q Focus tab above the Think Tank (where they generate questions and categorize them according to Bloom's taxonomy)] and then come up with questions to help them?"
The kids, especially Malik, seemed really excited about this prospect.  They're starting to internalize the process, which is great in itself.  It's also awesome because they gave me a better way to launch my lesson today :-)