Building Teacher Questioning Skills Through Lesson Modeling

In this module, middle and high school teachers explore a model inquiry-based STEM social justice lesson involving statistics and its implementation to understand the role of questioning techniques in delivering inquiry-based lessons, building depth of knowledge and understanding student thinking.  In this module, teachers will:

-- Evaluate their own questioning skills

-- Report, monitor and reflect on their own questioning skills

-- Learn new questioning skills while gaining exposure to an inquiry-based, social justice STEM lesson

-- Understand the role of questioning skills in building student exposure to Depth of Knowledge levels 3/4 level   

    thinking

Introduction

The following lesson provides the structure in which teachers will explore questioning, build questioning skills and the link between questioning and building student depth of knowledge.

Teacher Preparation

Watch Developing Rigor and Building Meaning through Questioning.

Read the Review of Effective Mathematics Classroom Questioning and Building Questioning Skills in the Classroom.  How many "try to" boxes do you typically accomplish daily?  Record this. Review and prepare your lesson.  Now, what questioning skills will you add to this lesson, where and why?  Record this.

Prepare to fill out the Troubleshooting guide after you deliver your lesson.  It is highly suggested that you video record your lesson.

The Lesson

This unit can be administered over a 3 day time-period but can be extended as a longer project (approximately one week) or as a school-wide project. The unit can be used typically in high school mathematics courses, depending on the level and type of differentiation. Students will consider the social justice issue of the racial achievement gap in relation to standardized testing. This unit was adapted from Rethinking Mathematics social justice themes and www.radicalmath.org.

Learning Objectives

The learners will...

• Represent statistics on student achievement by race on a graph

• Analyze the differences between achievement scores of students from

  different racial subgroups

• Use the online and interactive graphing paper as a tool for statistical evaluation: 

  graph paper
  

• Use this information to make predictions about the future of racial

  achievement gaps in school. 

Prior Knowledge

Consider the following background activities on race.

Activities Overview

Part I (2 class days): Discover meaning of standardized test scores and how they are calculated.

Part II (1 class day): Graph recent test scores and analyze the achievement gap between students of different races to discover how it is changing.

Part III (1 class day): Think about and discuss the the impact of economic inequity on those test scores. 

Inquiry Motivation

Using the interactive student research site ISEEK, students will read the following and take 30-40 minutes (including after school independent time) to research the following:

“One of the state's most prestigious high schools, East Chapel Hill High, failed federal testing standards this year. Only 20 percent of East's black students passed an end-of-course reading exam, compared with the goal of 35 percent set by the federal No Child Left Behind testing program. Likewise, 54 percent of black students passed the math exam, compared with the goal of 71 percent.” “East Chapel Hill fails U.S. goals”, The News and Observer, July 23, 2005

In the No Child Left Behind era, communities are inundated with statistics like the ones above. Without a proper understanding of standardized testing methods, statistical reports, and the social contexts that have produced these results, reports such as this one can have damaging impact on students’ self concepts. These reports tend to implicitly place blame on the victims of inequitable education systems, further disassociating oppressed students from school communities. With a more complete understanding of standardized test scores, students might be empowered by these reports to advocate against the school structures that serve to reproduce current social stratifications. 

Activities

Students watch the introductory mathematics tools needed for these activities: 

Creating Best Fit Lines

Build intuition about predicting the best fit line:

Visualizing Best Fit Lines

and

Predicting Best Fit Lines

Students complete the following via graph paper.

1. Plot the data on a graph with the x-axis representing the years in which the data was collected and the y-axis representing the percentage of students who passed the test that year.

Determine the line of best fit (or trend line) the data points of each racial group - first by hand, followed by Microsoft Excel. Write the equation of the line in standard form below (round all decimals to the nearest hundredth).

2. White:________________________________

3. African American: ________________________________

4. Latino/a: ________________________________

5. Asian-American: ________________________________

6. Native American: _______________________________

Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions 

1. Which line has greatest slope largest? How do you know?  How did you come to this conclusion?  What does this tell you about the students in this group?

2. Which line has the largest y-intercept largest? How do you know?  How did you come to this conclusion?  What does this tell you about the students in this group? 

3. What advantages do you think students who are not economically disadvantaged have over poor students that play a role in creating differences in academic achievement?  Why?  

4. What do you think should be done?  What can you do?  Why is this an important issue for you?  The United States and the world?

Student Self Assessment

Students will use the thermometer self-assessment for this activity.

Assessment

Teachers will assess students using the CCSS rubric.

Teacher Reflection Questions

Teacher reflection questions:

Example Reflection Questions 1

Example Reflection Questions 2

Example Reflection Questions 2

Building Questioning Reflection

How many "try to" boxes do you typically accomplish during your lesson that you hadn't before?  Record this. After viewing the video of your teaching, what additional questions could you include?  How could you structure your lesson, cooperative learning groups or other key learning environment aspects to include more questioning?  Record this. Review the following DOK question STEMS.  Where do your questions fall in terms of DOK level?  How can you shift your DOK levels 1, 2 questions to 3 or 4?  

                             DOK Question Stems

From Depth of Knowledge – Descriptors, Examples and Question Stems for Increasing Depth of Knowledge in the Classroom Developed by Dr. Norman Webb and Flip Chart developed by Myra Collins