The Essential QFT, Inquiring Minds Want to Know

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As we continue to think and learn about inquiry based learning, what it really is, and easy to employ techniques to support it, I found the article titled, Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions. One small change can yield big results, by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana, quite compelling.  Here’s what they have to say:

QFT – Question Formulation Technique is a process that develops students’ divergent (brainstorming), convergent (categorizing and prioritizing), and metacognitive (reflective) thinking abilities in a very short period of time.

The QFT process has six key steps:

Step 1: Teachers Design a Question Focus. The Question Focus, or QFocus, is a prompt that can be presented in the form of a statement or a visual or aural aid to focus and attract student attention and quickly stimulate the formation of questions. The QFocus is different from many traditional prompts because it is not a teacher’s question. It serves, instead, as the focus for student questions so students can, on their own, identify and explore a wide range of themes and ideas. For example, after studying the causes of the 1804 Haitian revolution, one teacher presented this QFocus: “Once we were slaves. Now we are free.” The students began asking questions about what changed and what stayed the same after the revolution.

 

Step 2: Students Produce Questions. Students use a set of rules that provide a clear protocol for producing questions without assistance from the teacher. The four rules are: ask as many questions as you can; do not stop to discuss, judge, or answer any of the questions; write down every question exactly as it was stated; and change any statements into questions. Before students start generating their questions, the teacher introduces the rules and asks the students to think about and discuss possible challenges in following them. Once the students get to work, the rules provide a firm structure for an open-ended thinking process. Students are able to generate questions and think more broadly than they would have if they had not been guided by the rules.

Step 3: Students Improve Their Questions. Students then improve their questions by analyzing the differences between open- and closed-ended questions and by practicing changing one type to the other. The teacher begins this step by introducing definitions of closed- and open-ended questions. The students use the definitions to categorize the list of questions they have just produced into one of the two categories. Then, the teacher leads them through a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of both kinds of questions. To conclude this step, the teacher asks the students to change at least one open-ended question into a closed-ended one, and vice versa, which leads students to think about how the phrasing of a question can affect the depth, quality, and value of the information they will obtain.

 

Step 4: Students Prioritize Their Questions. The teacher, with the lesson plan in mind, offers criteria or guidelines for the selection of priority questions. In an introduction to a unit, the instruction may be, “Choose the three questions you most want to explore further.” When designing a science experiment, it may be, “Choose three testable questions.” An essay related to a work of fiction may require that students select “three questions related to the key themes we’ve identified in this piece.” During this phase, students move from thinking divergently to thinking convergently, zero in on the locus of their inquiry, and plan concrete action steps for getting information they need to complete the lesson or task.

 

Step 5: Students and Teachers Decide on Next Steps. At this stage, students and teachers work together to decide how to use the questions. One teacher, for example, presented all the groups’ priority questions to the entire class the next day during a “Do Now” exercise and asked them to rank their top three questions. Eventually, the class and the teacher agreed on this question for their Socratic Seminar discussion: “How do poverty and injustice lead to violence in A Tale of Two Cities?”

 

Step 6: Students Reflect on What They Have Learned. The teacher reviews the steps and provides students with an opportunity to review what they have learned by producing, improving, and prioritizing their questions. Making the QFT completely transparent helps students see what they have done and how it contributed to their thinking and learning. They can internalize the process and then apply it in many other settings

The Essential: PISA

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The following is a synopsis of an article found in The Atlantic (July/August 2011) titled, The World’s SchoolMaster.  As we visit districts in Canada and the US, many of us are hearing talk around the PISA.  This synopsis may help in your understanding of this test and its implications.  Note, the following observations are pulled directly from the text of the article.

In 1996, Schleicher (the world’s schoolmaster – Duncan loves this guy and consults with him regularly) joined the OECD  (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and designed the PISA (the Program for International Student Assessment) to move the organization from measuring inputs, like spending on schools, to outputs, how much kids learn.  The test measures beyond students’ retention of facts.  It measures their readiness for knowledge worker jobs and their ability to think critically and solve real world problems.  To remain economically competitive we need to measure what students actually know and from there, make decisions.

Spring of 2000, all 30 OECD members and two other countries had a sampling of their 15 year old’s take the PISA.  The results caused uproar.  The US ranked somewhere above Greece and below Canada, a middling performance we’ve repeated every round since.  The Germans ranked even lower than us.

US response: it’s our immigrants.  Not so, our native-born perform just as unimpressively as our immigrants.  Apparently a country’s wealth does not predict success.  Poverty is destiny in America where as in Canada and Finland, their poor perform much better than our poor.  One big beef was that the first PISA exam only took a sampling of approximately 5000 US students, not enough of a representative sampling to really matter.  Samplings are much bigger now, but I don’t have the exact numbers of US students tested most recently.

So what do high performing districts do, according to Schleicher’s research?

1.    Teacher training schools are much more rigorous and selective
2.    They put developing high quality principals and teachers above efforts like reducing class size or equipping sports teams
3.    And once they have these well-trained professionals in place, they found ways to hold the teachers accountable for results while allowing creativity in their methods
4.    Notably, they devoted equal or more resources to the schools with the poorest kids

Today, 70 countries collectively give PISA to representative samples of more than 500,000 15 year olds every three years.  A longitudinal study of 30,000 Canadian students recently found PISA scores to be more accurate than report card grades in predicting which kids will go to college.  In 2010, Shanghai, participated in the PISA.  They trounced every single country.  Schleicher believes this is due to a policy of rotating the best teachers into the region’s worst performing schools, the opposite of what tends to happen in the US.

Oregon, Japan and Germany now include PISA questions on their own standardized tests.  Steven Paine, former superintendent of West Virginia, redesigned his state’s curriculum to make it more demanding, based in part on PISA findings stating, “We had set the bar too low.”

In the end culture is created by what we do.  Schleicher has since developed a pilot test for schools in the US to compare their individual school scores to those in the world.  Thanks for reading.  C

The Essential: Lesson Study Simplified

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In this month’s Tool’s for Schools (Learning Forward, Summer 2011 Vol. 14, No.4), Anthony Armstrong shares an elegant and simple system to conduct Lesson Studies.  The system was designed by the Development Studies Center.  The Lesson Study cycle consists of three phases: Plan the Lesson; Observe the Lesson; and Analyze the Data and Discuss the Lesson.

Phase One: Plan the Lesson

In this phase a teacher leader and her team watch a DVD about lesson study and read an article about the concept’s origins, which happens to be Japan.  I assume that the Developmental Studies Center offers resources of this nature at www.devstu.org.  Once the stage or background knowledge foundation has set, the group then looks at a pre-prepared lesson so that the group can focus on observations and analysis.  Using a Lesson Planning Form, the lesson study group decides for every teacher action, what are the observable measurable behaviors they might observe by the students.  And, how might a teacher respond to anticipated student behaviors.  How will the teacher intervene?  By predicting and anticipating behaviors, the group discussed and shared solutions before the lesson even began!

Phase Two: Observe the Lesson

Using a rubric, the teachers then observe the lesson in a classroom setting.  The Teacher Leaders sticks her neck out and delivers the lesson.  But, the group doesn’t focus their attentions on observing the teacher.  Instead, they focus all their attentions on the learning.  And, they do not interact with the students.  Using three simple observation tools, the team splits up observation responsibilities into three sub-categories:

  • Word-for-Word record 1: What does the teacher ask?  The recorder is examining the types of questions teachers can ask and how they affect student engagement and learning.  Each time the teacher asks a question, record the exact questions and time.
  • Word-for-Word record 2: How do the students respond?  Each time the teacher asks a questions, record the time and exactly what the students say in response.  In order to do this two observers may have to work together to make a connection between the question asked and then how the students responded to make sense of it all.  I suggest video taping the lesson to make sure observations are accurate.
  • Time sweep: Who’s talking and when?  Who begins speaking? What time? What are the number of minutes or seconds the speaker(s) talked?  Why do this?  To measure how much time the teacher and students spend talking to explore what the time spent talking tells the group about the lesson and how it affects student learning.

Phase Three: Analyze the Data and Discuss the Lesson.  This is where the rubber meets the road.  Less focused on the teacher, the group focuses entirely on what resonated with the students and what parts of the lesson didn’t.  The teachers seek to understand how the students made sense of the materials and what each student’s reactions revealed about that student as a learner.  Time sweeps allow the group to understand whether there’s a sage on the stage or whether the students are clearly doing the work.

The final exercise is for the Teacher Leader to journal their thoughts while the observers write on sticky notes what they thought went well, what could change and how it applies to changing their individual behaviors going forward.

The next step is for another group member to present a lesson.  Using a lesson framework such as Hunter’s 7 steps (anticipatory hook… etc.) or the 5E Model, the group would design a lesson together and then move to phases two and three.

Imagine if PLCs conducted a Lesson Study each quarter and video-taped the process?  That would go a long way to building a school or district based video library of solid slices of instructional behaviors for others to observe and learn from.  Fantastic stuff.  Do we really need to purchase expensive packaged Lesson Study kits when at the core, this process is clearly not rocket science?  I think not.

Does this simple and beautiful model of Lesson Study meet Domain I Standards?  I’d say yes to all the below observable measurable behaviors articulated below.

  • Utilizes group processes to help colleagues work collaboratively to solve problems, make decisions, manage conflict, and promote meaningful change;
  • Models effective skills in listening, presenting ideas, leading discussions, clarifying, mediating, and identifying the needs of self and others in order to advance shared goals and professional learning;
  • Employs facilitation skills to create trust among colleagues, develop collective wisdom, build ownership and action that supports student learning;
  • Strives to create an inclusive culture where diverse perspectives are welcomed in addressing challenges; and
  • Uses knowledge and understanding of different backgrounds, elasticities, cultures, and languages to promote effective interactions among colleagues.