“Know thy impact.” This maxim by Dr. John Hattie has stayed with me since I read his seminal resource Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning (Routledge, 2012). It continues to surface as, too often, the teacher-to-student influence is not clear. This lack of clarity
Oxford High School (OHS) has an enrollment of 1223 students grades 9-12. OHS students are 60% white, 27% Black, 12% Hispanic, 1% Asian. Half of the students qualify for free and reduced lunch. In Fall 2019, OHS teachers began a district-wide learning journey focused on classroom questioning. Using Walsh and Sattes’ Quality Questioning, 2nd Edition, as a guide, we
I am a questionologist. If you’ve never heard the term before that may be because I made it up. I needed a word to describe what I do: I study the art and science of questioning. My work focuses on why and how the simple act of asking questions can
Imagine if a medical review board never talked about surgery. Instead, the doctors confined their discussion to the results of the operation, without ever asking whether the procedure itself was properly executed. Most of us would rightly question whether the review board could be effective
To stack the cards in favor of students leading small group discussions, stay with me as I recount a recent visit to an eighth grade class: Students sat in rows. They had just finished reading “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury. At first, students appeared excited about Bradbury’s story. Sitting in the middle of a
Can I explicitly teach knowledge and skills in my inquiry-based classroom? Do I need to frontload everything before my students can be successful in our inquiry? Knowing that learning through inquiry is the basis of a three-dimensional Concept-Based Literacy classroom, teachers often wonder about the
Better all the time If we believe that we are to help our learners to make at least one year of growth for every year of schooling, then it would seem logical that as educators we focus on improving our practice every year we teach. This
Oscar Wilde once wrote “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” Imagine what he’d think today with the overwhelming amount of digital information at everyone’s fingertips. Inside student-led, inquiry-based classrooms, teachers know that building digital literacy and media skills deserves focused attention. While our students
I walked into a classroom and noticed an Albert Einstein poster on the wall. This wasn’t a particularly unique poster. It showed a headshot of Albert Einstein with the quote, “imagination is more important than knowledge.” I have seen this poster countless times, but on this
In my National Writing Project summer institute, each morning begins with a participant sharing a short powerful text to use as an inspiration for writing. This last year, NWP fellow Nancy Tacke shared a poem entitled “I Remember.” The poem first listed several intense memories