Asking a question for a specific answer

Today WE did an activity around asking an question to get an answer. We have practised this before , just briefly. I had two groups - the first group we put cash, advertisement up n the board. We had a little go at a group trying to come up with a question to give only that answer. It was hard - we looked at how you have to be very specific or you can get several answers. Then i put them into pairs to go and come up with questions, ask each other , rework until they had the best question they could make. It was a challenge, they then record the best question into their draft writing book. I think we will publish some.

I then did this with the second group. All chn found it hard, a few found it nearly impossible.

I have few photos and a video clip of Jordyn reading her question - it wasn't specific enough , so she went off to work on it again - I want t0 record her second go again tomorrow.

Now .. so what... I need to include this activity all the time , in reading groups , perhaps within our shared book - not that we have read much lately- it is definitely an area that stretches most children and an area many of us can improve on - try it - it made me stretch my thinking. I'll put in photos and clips in when I am at a computer that can ALLOW ME TO DO IT - I WISH SOMEONE COULD HELP ME FIX THIS COMPUTERS PROBLEM!! I just have to work out how to put video clips on here - may have to upload to youtube??(Done)




Arron's question was quite specific and the answer fitted the criteria, Jordyn has found this more difficult - she went away to work on it - I will try to record her second attempt. If you listen to Harry's his question is well written - he really enjoyed this activity - found it challenging but was quite successful.

Another thing we did was to get the kids to put their hand anywhere from on the shoulder(for easy) up in the air (for hard) to rate how challenging the activity was - many put their hands write up. Very hard - I must say it was challenging for me too

Superclubsplus

Superclubsplus offers online live forums - we had a go at one of these - it was FUN. We used all the laptops and our class computers and even some of room 10s. ( They were not in their room)

Earlier on in the day we looked at Kate Leeming - Breaking the Cycle an adventurer cyclist.

We brainstormed questions - later we went live and the kids typed up questions and Kate was typing back as fast as she could go. The students lost all their thinking about good questions - they just really enjoyed the activity.

Blooms Taxonomy

Once again Blooms is something a knew a little about. My goal is to get the students to a stage where they can use Blooms to come up with an activity or a question at that level. I have focused on Blooms within my reading activities. Some examples of these are below. I have given some choice in the activities but had some have tos as well to ensure they are completing some comprehension activities and some higher order thinking.

One Wheel Drive – Glue this into your literacy book

Deep Ark 6

Questioning

Part of my Inquiry has been around questioning,

A couple of successful activities are here as an example

I could see the need for clarifying open and closed questions with my class.

We have investigated what these two questions are , when you might use them.
Caleb was very excited having traveled up on his dad's new fishing boat. After a little discussion we decided to write questions for Caleb.

They worked in pairs , had a piece of paper and recorded open on one side and closed on the other.

Then we made a donut circle - one partner had the questions , they would read one and the person opposite them shared whether they thought it wa an open or closed
THis is a slide showing some of their sheets with questions

Activities to enhance the development of the Thinking Hats

I have had some experience with the thinking hats - it has been great to refocus my thinking around ways to integrate these through learning experiences in the classroom to enhance the thinking competency.

THE HATS




These a a couple of activities we did with thinking.

White hat thinking - different ways we already know people make money by selling from their gate/shared experiences from children.

Used these photos and videos

Another scenario I gave the class was that we had been given free tickets to fly to Auckland and do some wonderful activities at Rainbow's end. The only money they would need to make the trip happen was they had to raise twenty dollars.

We used green hat thinking to come up with all the ideas. I used slide.com to put this together - shows some of their individual brainstorming.

having Janelle (Student Teacher) was a great opportunity to introduce her to the thinking hats. She was very keen to use the World Cup as a vehicle - so we planned various activities using the hats and PMI graphic organiser. It was great to note how much more aufait the class was with the different hats and the thinking they asked for.