Instructional Minute

Questioning is a process that can elicit thinking and speaking to provide data around student learning and create the opportunities necessary to give students high quality feedback. Traditionally, questioning has been viewed as something that teachers use to guide students through a lesson and determine if they are on track and paying attention. Questioning can be used to do so much more than just scratch the surface of learning. This one-sided approach places students in a passive, submissive role and treats the teacher-student exchange as an isolated event.

Quality questioning provides the opportunity for students to take on a more active role. Student responses provide additional opportunities to support and/or elaborate on their current thinking/understanding about the focus questions in the lesson. This provides the teacher with insight into where the students are in their learning. Quality Questioning is grounded in reciprocity that makes feedback truly formative. It is a dynamic and interactive process, serves as a catalyst for thinking, which in turn enables students to participate in dialogue that generates useful feedback for all members of the classroom. Teachers will need to be purposeful in crafting questions that are purposeful in activating thinking, dialogue, and feedback. The planned use of Focus Questions will help to ensure that questioning practices support dialogue and feedback within the classroom.

Focus Questions are utilized to stimulate the thinking of all students at a critical point in a lesson. These questions provide an opportunity for the entire class to think about and several students answer the question or provide additional questions to expand learning. Effective focus questions uncover errors in thinking and provide areas for scaffolding to correct errors.

• 1) What knowledge and cognitive skills do students need in order to attain the current learning goal? The learning goal is related to the daily learning target (DLT), and each focus question should align with the target.
• 2) How will students receive the question? Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development reminds us that we want to find the “sweet spot” of learning which is just above our students’ current mastery where challenged but not frustrated.
• 3) What evidence of student learning is the question likely to produce? Decide how you want your students to respond, anticipate their responses, and be prepared to handle misconceptions.
• 4) Will students understand what is being asked? If students cannot understand what is being asked, they will not be able to respond. Projecting the question or passing it out on paper for students to view while asking might provide students an opportunity to understand.

For Focus Questions to be most effective, teach your students the purpose of these questions and that not all questions have a right or wrong answer.

Walsh, J. A. (2022). Questioning for formative feedback: Meaningful dialogue to improve learning.

To review additional grade level and content area sample items, click the link below.

Sample Item Sets

Please join us for an exciting professional development opportunity partnered with the ISD: Math Essential #3! Take a look at the flyer below for more information and follow the link to registration for the April 16th session!

K-8 Science:

• April 9th at 4:00 pm

K-12 Math:

• April 30th at 4:15 pm

K-8 ELA:

• April 23rd at 4:15 pm

9-12 ELA:

• April 16th at 4:00 pm

Below you can find the new, updated required instructional minutes by grade level and content area. Each grade level also includes a sample schedule.

The document attached outline K-5 Social Studies curricular resources, standards and pacing. This can also be found by clicking here on the LSD website.

The documents attached outline K-8 curricular resources, standards and pacing. This can also be found by clicking here on the LSD website.

The document attached outlines 9-12 curricular resources, standards and pacing. This can also be found by clicking here on the LSD website.

This on-demand professional learning resource provides micro-learning videos about every IXL feature and best practices for implementing IXL. Teachers must be signed into their IXL accounts to access these videos. https://www.ixl.com/resources/elearning-library

A resource to use as you see fit.