One of the themes I’ve noticed running through the Model Schools Conference is the necessity of raising rigor and relevance with our students. A common issue teachers have, says Lin Kuzmich, is that we ask questions, then call on one of the three kids who always raises his hand, or, in the even that we don’t get an answer, provide it and move on.

Two ways to avoid this. I connected teacher questioning to the “So what?” question and the levels of questioning that we talked about at the <a
href=”https://thebooksupplier.com/category/ap-nm/”>APSI-NM workshops from last summer. There are a number of questions listed for teacher questioning that go beyond the “Okay, that’s the right answer. Next question” mentality.

To further increase rigor, have students create the questions. I like this for inner/outer circle activities, personally. The Q-Matrix gives those kids who are struggling a place to start. Think about it this way: If students create the questions, it requires them to interact with the text in more than a “find the answer” kind of way.

I’ll find a link to a clean copy of these and post it on a resource page. The PowerPoint this came from can be found on Lin Kuzmich’s website.