What Was I Thinking?

What was I thinking?

My son-in-law, Cassady Feasby, plays bass guitar for the talented and popular country musician, Dierks Bentley, so my wife and I have become country music fans.  One of the reason Dierks has done so well is that he is a first-rate song writer, and his songs tend to resonate in lots of ways.  One of Bentley’s hit songs is “What Was I Thinking,” which has a catchy tune but lyrics you might not want your children singing along with in the car.  Once you hear it, however, the chorus tends to stick with you and pop up in all kinds of situations.

This week, I asked you to email answers to my question about Rock Solid Questioning after Wednesday’s late start.  As my inbox began to fill up with your responses, the chorus to Bentley’s song started running through my head.  By Friday afternoon, the dinging of the email alert started to match the rhythm of the ticking of the schoolhouse clock hanging in my office.

What were you thinking?

The emails you sent were fantastic.  Let me give you a short summary:

·         I received over 130 responses.  A few were a few sentences long, but most were several paragraphs in length, and many took up several pages.  (Turnabout is fair play!)

·         Many, many of you took a great deal of time to respond and were incredibly thoughtful and insightful.

·         You shared stories about experiences you had with a variety of questioning strategies.  You shared questioning simulations, entrance activities, exit activities, and group activities of all sorts that you use to engage students.

·         About one third of you reported that you experimented with new questioning strategies on Thursday and Friday of last week, and were overwhelmingly pleased with the results.  (A handful of you even changed things up on Wednesday for first hour!)

·         You asked questions of me and deepened my understanding of some of the questioning strategies.

What are we thinking?

I found it relatively easy to summarize common themes from your emails.  This is what you tend to believe about questioning, HSE:

·         Questioning strategies, when used well, improve both student learning and student engagement.  Your emails are crystal clear about this.

·         Many of you prepare ahead of time a list of key questions and try to find ways to make sure every student in the class thinks about and answers these questions.

·         One key to improved student learning is to have many different questioning strategies in your instructional toolbox.

·         Teaching is both an art and a science.  Part of the science of teaching is having many strategies at your disposal.  Part of the art of teaching is knowing your students well and knowing which strategies will be most effective.  It is knowing how to use the questioning strategy.

·         Building a safe, supportive, and nurturing classroom community will open opportunities to use a whole range of questioning activities.  (This may be my personal favorite.)

I may not rush to have you email me responses soon (at least not until my inbox gets back under control), but I did appreciate learning your thoughts about questioning and about your ongoing efforts to grow in this area.

I have no question that your hard work will make a difference in student learning.

Have a great week, Southeastern.

Phil