Essential questions allow the student to really interact with the literature/assigned reading. Questioning the text can also activate a higher level of skill set. This is so, because, "Questioning is central to monitoring students as researchers through a discliplinary lens" (Buehl 170). In the image below I have provided a chart that could help us generate effective essential questions. Assigning essential questions is also not limited to literacy heavy based subjects such as English or history, the example Buehl mentioned in the reading was how someone questioned the mathematics of baseball and how that completely changed the game.
Ted Talk Video- How To Escape Education's Death Valley
I decided to include this video because, in a way, I felt it related to the reading. The presenter began with providing the alarming rates of high school drop outs in America, considering how this country is a world leader in several different aspects, its educational system lacks attention. In his Ted Talk presentation, Ken Robinson speaks about how schools across America have established a culture of compliance while eliminating student curiosity. By doing so, schools have made much of the assigned work routine-like and uninteresting. This is where I believed this video tied in with the text by Buehl. The amount of students dropping out, in part, can be can be caused by the restraints put on their creativity. As an educator, to spark interest in your students, you can utilize the essential questions method. "Covering topics of a discipline is not the same thing as teaching a discipline" (Buehl 171).
I enjoyed reading your post. One bit of information you brought up that is worth discussing is when it comes to future educators reading a certain text through the "lens of a disciplinary expert." You go on to say that a certain text can be disengaging for sudents, and I agree that this is the case when basic comprehension questions are asked. Students then feel tempted to just go on the Internet and look for answers, and although this may be harder for some subjects than others, giving this context/bigger picture idea can very well help with sparking student interest and engagement. In the end though, the way I see it, we are teaching children, and not our respected subject. Our job is to teach certain skill sets so that the student can apply them to not only future courses of the sam esubject and other courses, but also in life so that one can continue to be a life-long learner.
ReplyDeleteCould these skill sets look the same across disciplines? I agree that there is a major difference in questioning historical and fictional,however, shouldn't teachers share collaborative strategies to promote achievement? I find great learning happens within interdisciplinary learning.
DeleteI think you both make interesting points. Daniel, I think that Buehl had a good answer when balancing somewhere between teaching students (and sometimes leaving content by the wayside) and teaching content (but forgetting the personal identities of the students involved). He said, "Disciplinary literacy paves a new roadway: middle and high school teachers who are enthusiastic and knowledgeable about their disciplines, and who are dedicated to mentoring their students into these ways of understanding their lives and the world" (p. 281). And to your point, Patrick, I agree that some of those skill sets can be similar across different disciplines. Even when they are not, engaging with a text through different disciplinary lenses does a lot toward helping students understand their worlds and embrace learning in general.
DeleteThank you Daniel,
DeleteI appreciate how you noted the difference between essential questions and basic comprehension questions because they are extremely different. Basic comprehension questions can further disengage the students because they do not challenge them at all.
I really like the last quote. If they just wanted someone to cover topics then anyone can do that just give them a list. However, it takes a good teacher that understands their discipline to be able to teach the students. Buhel talks about how he was going to have to teach a class he isn't certified to do but had to because the school needed a teacher. He was saved from doing all that extra work he was going to have to do because he had the motivation to do all the extra work to become enough of an expert to teach the students. Thanks for posting the essential questions because as a teacher, we could go through the questions too to gain a deep understanding of the texts before we give it to our students .
ReplyDelete"Covering topics of a discipline is not the same thing as teaching a discipline" is a really great point from Buehl, and something that we future teachers need to remember. Anybody can just make a list of things to go over and then mention them in class. But, the students will not learn from that. If you teach a discipline, then the students have to come out of the class everyday with some kind of new information in their lives.
ReplyDeletePatryk, I really agree with your comment. I was thinking the same reasoning when I decided to include that quote in the blog post. Teaching, at least worthy teaching, goes beyond just presenting material to the students.
DeleteThanks for your post,
ReplyDeleteI like your point about being aware that not all students in our classrooms will be necessarily passionate about the subjects we teach. This is why it is important for students to be motivated to engage with readings because, if they do not have an incentive to do so, they will either fall behind or mundanely do the work without engaging with the reading fruitfully. Two things that are important in this context is teaching students how to think like someone in our discipline, how to use disciplinary-specific techniques in this discipline, and also challenging students by posing essential questions. I think essential questions are really important to the class because they get at larger themes of the course. I also believe students will be interested in addressing these questions, because many of them have real world implications.
Hi Linda,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that Ken Robinson's talk is relevant to Buehl's fifth chapter, particularly when it comes to student curiosity. Going by Buehl's definition of disciplinary reading as inquiry (reading to find out, not reading to get done), this curiosity is an essential part of literacy in the disciplines. In his example, he considers himself literate in baseball even though his experience doesn't really go much past fandom and interest, while his wife is literate in music because she is reached the heights of a career as a classical violinist. We are asking our students to become like Buehl is with baseball, navigating our discipline through interest rather than decades of expert experience.
Which type of disciplinary expertise do you think is better for a teacher to present to their students? One that is like the professional violinist Wendy, or one that is like Buehl in the world of baseball?
That’s a very good questions Robin. I would have to think somewhere in the middle would be ideal, referring back to the example Buehl gave us. His wife approaches texts in a more serious manner than himself, as you mentioned that’s her career while Buehl is a fan. But teachers should present their student with important texts required for higher understanding, while also catching the genuine interest of students.
DeleteHi Linda, thank you for posting this week. I think essential questions are so important for a lesson. It really shapes for us what we need the lesson to focus on and how we and the students should be answering those questions. I also really appreciated the Ted Talk video you posted about. Essential questions help spur student interest and student interest is very important. We can no longer have the philosophy that it is not our jobs to make students care because the trends are not on our side in this regard.
ReplyDeleteThank you Dane,
DeleteI totally agree with the last part of your comment. Some teachers may think its their job to assign the reading, and leave the rest of the responsibility to the students. But thats not entirely true, we have to guide students to actually engage with the texts. And essential questions help accomplish that.
Thank you for your post. I do think that one of the essential teaching skills or abilities is "essential questioning". With strong discipline background, educators know what the essential knowledge points on their discipline are and how should they construct questions to make students be on the alert. Just as Buehl said that questioning makes students play their role as researchers to figure out the truth. Let students shift from passive learning to active learning.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing,
DeleteI very much agree on how we should help student into that transition from passive to actively learning.
Thank you for your post. I like Buehl's argument that you mentioned in the post that, "questioning is central to monitoring students as researchers through a disciplinary lens". I agree with what you said that "questioning the text can also activate a higher level of skill set". I think questioning is a good way to guide students to find the key points they should pay attention to during reading. Questioning differs from telling, which meets the requirement of heuristic teaching. However, in my opinion, it might be not enough to just assign essential questions to students to help them read and understand the texts. Teachers should also lead students to grasp this ability of questioning during learning.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your opinion Yutoung,
ReplyDeleteOther than assigning essential questions to the students, which other literacy practices do you think would be effective?