{"id":143569,"date":"2021-08-01T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2021-08-01T16:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/truthforteachers.com\/?p=143569"},"modified":"2022-01-03T22:51:42","modified_gmt":"2022-01-04T02:51:42","slug":"using-student-generated-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/truthforteachers.com\/using-student-generated-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Students won’t answer questions? Have them generate their own."},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first stepped into the high school classroom two decades ago, I \u2014 like many other new teachers \u2014 was fresh out of graduate school and eager to share my passion for literature.<\/h2>\n

My graduate courses had explored esoteric topics such as Shakespeare and the Law and Irish Feminist Drama. I was bursting with newfound knowledge that I couldn\u2019t wait to impart to the young adults in my classroom. In other words, they were the urn and I was the font of knowledge.<\/p>\n

I quickly learned that the classes in which I waxed poetic about whatever novel we were reading fell woefully flat. I had loved Pride & Prejudice<\/i> in high school (and in college, and in grad school, and to this day) so I couldn\u2019t imagine why our discussions about Austen\u2019s witty irony and the sly narrator didn\u2019t resonate with my students. Weren\u2019t they too laughing at Austen\u2019s clever put-downs of Mr. Collins and rooting for dashing Darcy and his soulmate Elizabeth? Well, apparently my students weren\u2019t. In fact, my students didn\u2019t even seem to be reading the chapters assigned nightly for homework. I\u2019d get frustrated with their lack of attention to their homework, they\u2019d come to class seemingly unprepared, and the disappointing cycle would continue.<\/p>\n

I looked around for solutions and \u2014 in those prehistoric years before the online teacher community and resources we have now \u2014 resorted to prepared study guide questions and bribes that I would show the movie when we finished the unit. These techniques may have helped a bit, but not really. I was holding students \u2018accountable\u201d but were they thinking? Making connections? No way.<\/p>\n

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For the most part, the use of what I\u2019ll call \u201cpre-packaged\u201d guided reading questions seemed like a crutch for students while they\u2019re reading and ultimately limited their ownership of the assigned material. In ELA classrooms, the questions often implied a single \u201ccorrect\u201d interpretation of the assigned reading. Take, for example, a typical question: \u201cHow does Zora Neale Hurston use the pear tree as a symbol of Janie\u2019s sexual awakening?\u201d As students read this question, the question essentially tells them that the tree = symbol = sexual awakening. What is left for them to figure out? And here\u2019s another drawback to using these questions: if you teach in an academically competitive school like the one I teach in, the students\u2019 temptation to cheat here is pretty hard for them to resist. Students quickly circulate what they believe to be the \u201ccorrect\u201d answers, and if you plan to use similar questions again next year, I would reconsider. I can pretty much guarantee that one of your savvy students will have a Quizlet posted with the questions and the answers that future students can \u2014 and do \u2014 access.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, after nearly two decades of trial and error, I\u2019ve come across some routines that work in my classroom, a cycle that centers my students\u2019 <\/i>voices \u2014 and their questions \u2014 throughout our whole class literature units.<\/p>\n

Centering student voices is a challenge for so many of us, especially when we struggle with issues like classroom management as new educators. For some of us this year especially \u2014 we\u2019re just downright tired and it\u2019s easier to use class time to plow through content by relying on these pre-packaged guided reading questions. Or we stand in the front of the classroom and lecture while our students dutifully (or not) jot down our words of wisdom in a notebook for a future test.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m preaching to the choir here, I\u2019m sure. If you\u2019re reading this blog, you\u2019re already embracing innovation and (hopefully) dismissive of the lazy, elitist teacher-centered practices that I have fallen into. So, kudos to you. I admire your passion to make your classroom a student-centered hub that buzzes with authentic learning.<\/p>\n

But for those of us whose curriculum is in some ways predetermined, perhaps we can all use that nudge \u2014 especially after this year of pandemic learning. Now more than ever, teaching is tiring and we have fallen into patterns where we prioritize efficiency and \u2014 frankly \u2014 survival to get through the lesson planning, the grading, the technical challenges that have overwhelmed us this year. So, if along with the upcoming school year, you too need a fresh start or some spring cleaning in terms of instructional practices, I\u2019m here to offer an easy-to-use option that can be used across disciplines and integrated into your everyday practice and teaching repertoire.<\/p>\n

Student-Generated Discussion Questions<\/b><\/h2>\n

What we may already be doing<\/i><\/b><\/h3>\n

Student-Generated Discussion Questions (SGDQ) aren\u2019t radically innovative but prioritizing the use of them can really be a game-changer in terms of helping to minimize your voice in the classroom and instead amplify the voices of the young adults in our physical (and virtual) classrooms.<\/p>\n

Many of us have probably asked students to \u201cmake a sample quiz\u201d at the end of a unit. For some of us, it was a throw-away activity \u2014 one last low-stakes activity that provided some hopefully effective pre-test review. \u201cMake a 5-question quiz for a classmate about Transcendentalism. Don\u2019t forget an answer key,\u201d we might suggest as a homework assignment.\u00a0 It was a way to synthesize a student\u2019s knowledge, while simultaneously promoting student accountability as they began to study for a summative assessment.<\/p>\n

Recent studies have shown how effective this technique can be. In a 2020 study,<\/a> Mirjam Ebersbach and her team found that \u201cquestion generation yielded positive effects on factual and transfer knowledge.\u201d Ebersbach\u2019s study suggests that student-generated questions require and promote the increasingly significant practice of retrieval <\/i>because \u201cpreviously processed information must be retrieved\u201d to generate or \u201cformulate adequate questions.\u201d So, as we may already be doing, requiring students to write quiz or test questions at the end of a unit is a productive use of the students\u2019 time and effort. And it\u2019s low stakes for the students: Ebersbach\u2019s work even concluded that the \u201cdepth of the generated questions was not related to students\u2019 final test performance.\u201d Therefore, just the process<\/i> of writing the questions was beneficial to the students.<\/p>\n

But how does this technique amplify student voices, rather than the teacher\u2019s? Ebersbach suggests that the \u201crephrasing\u201d involved in question-creation requires students to use their own words, their own voice, to become more active participants in their retention. Consider the contrast between this active<\/i> notion of \u201crephrasing\u201d and a student who passively<\/i> reviews notes from a teacher-lecture or re-reads material from a textbook. Some teachers take the practice a step further by including some of these student-generated questions in the final assessment. This additional step not only promotes student questions but values and rewards them, centering their input as essential to the class\u2019s growth.<\/p>\n

Ways to use student-generated questions throughout a unit<\/i><\/b><\/h3>\n

A couple of years ago, I read Peter Smagorinsky\u2019s brilliant Teaching English by Design<\/i> in which he promotes using SGDQ throughout literature units, not just at the tail end of the unit, as I had been doing . Smagorinsky requires small groups of students to generate questions about a particular section of a novel. This small group is then responsible for leading a class discussion on their assigned section. Brilliant. The students lead the way \u2014 from start to finish \u2014 and each student\u2019s voice plays an essential role in a class discussion during the course of the unit. I was immediately hooked.<\/p>\n

But getting the students to generate substantial questions seemed difficult. My initial attempts resulted in only factually-based questions and short-lived class discussions that quickly fizzled. How far can you get in a discussion with a question like \u201cWhat does Gatsby do to impress Daisy?\u201d or (worse yet) \u201cWho is the narrator of the novel?\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately, Smagorinsky offers some detailed suggestions. He begins the year by carving out time to teach students how to create <\/i>different types of questions. And, through my trial and error, I\u2019ve realized this is a critical step. I started by borrowing Smagorinsky\u2019s categories. He suggests teaching students to create questions in the following categories: inference, generalization, effects of literary form or technique, the purpose of a particular event, evaluations, emotions, and personal connections. His text provides detailed lesson plans, directions, and descriptions of these different types of questions.<\/p>\n

So, like Smagornsky, I take a day early in the year to teach the types and quality of questions that I expect of students. Using our very first texts, I begin by modeling questions and creating a set of questions with the whole class. The first step to success is encouraging the students to begin their questions with the words \u201cHow\u201d or \u201cWhy.\u201d These \u201cHow\u201d and \u201cWhy\u201d questions promote critical thinking and, as we begin to use these SGDQ to conduct class discussions, these types of questions eventually transfer into more sustained discussion in class (as opposed to my \u201cWho is the narrator?\u201d dilemma of previous attempts). Utilize the I Do-We Do-You Do strategy here: have students break into small groups and create questions of their own. Then assign some for students to make individually, either in class or for homework.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve begun to rely on SQGD so much that I\u2019ve built a template<\/a> that I share with the students to use throughout the year. I post it prominently wherever they can easily access it \u2014 our class web page, their digital notebooks, my daily digital agenda, etc. I\u2019ve used Smagorinsky\u2019s categories and tweaked them a bit, offering sample questions that pertain to our summer reading novels. Smagorinsky\u2019s categories stretched in the reverse direction, ending with emotional responses and personal connections. While I encourage students to fill in the table in whatever order they wish, I\u2019ve found that allowing students to start with the reader-response type questions has been more productive. Students feel less intimidated and are less inclined to give up on the assignment or reach out for help from online sources. By the time they get to the bottom of the table, they\u2019ve hopefully built up a little confidence about their insights and may be willing to take a chance on a simple literary device they noticed in their assigned reading.<\/p>\n

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You\u2019ll notice that the questions are designed to generate open-ended responses and all start with higher order thinking question words like \u201cHow\u201d and \u201cWhy.\u201d This assignment is one I use frequently \u2014 about 3-4 times per unit. Students create their own questions for homework and we\u2019ll kick off class by sharing our questions in small groups. The small group discussions are organic and authentic. Each student has something to contribute and the small-group discussions are far superior to the discussions when I pass out questions designed by me or assign study guide questions that I find at the end of a story in a textbook or anthology. That small group work is brutal: the kids merely divide-and-conquer the questions, rarely talk to one another, and generally are just not invested in the discussion.<\/p>\n

As the unit progresses, the students build a portfolio of questions about a text. We\u2019ll use their questions for our Harkness discussions. Each student feels prepared for these discussions because they have a body of work \u2014 of questions \u2014 to contribute to the conversation. While there will always be some students who are less at ease in these whole-class student-guided discussions, each student knows that their safety net in the conversation is the list of questions they have in front of them. And these student-centered discussions are fruitful and energizing. My voice is minimized and practically eliminated as students showcase their knowledge, dig deeper into challenging texts, and make connections that I \u2014 a generation removed from my students \u2014 do not have the ability to make for them.<\/p>\n

For those of you teaching other disciplines, these literary-focused categories may not work for you. But the categories can be easily adapted to various disciplines. Consider some of these basic variations:<\/p>\n