KARCHER STAFF BLOG
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Kudos
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- Congrats to Mike Jones and the boys varsity volleyball team for a great season as they finished their season at the sectional game. Great season!
- Congrats to our varsity girls volleyball team on their State Champion WIN this weekend in Green Bay!!! Burlington won the first two matches, lost the second two, and then came back to win the 5th and final match for the championship! Congrats to the team and coaches! Congrats to Steve and Barb Berezowitz as their daughter Maddie is a member of the team! Congrats to Kailee Longoria, coach for girls volleyball!
- Kudos to Brad Ferstenou, Stephanie Rummler, and our leadership student team for their idea for Trick or Treat as part of our character KCBs. What a great idea!
- Thank you to Jenny Geyso, Alyssa Riggs, Stephanie Rummler, Donna Sturdevant, and Rod Stoughton for attending the Poynette Visit this past week with the team of 15 from BASD. It was a great learning day for our team!
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Information/Reminders...
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- Social Studies... it is your week to have students send an email about their time in your class to their parent/guardians!
- Monday, November 6 - Staff Meeting 2:40 - 3:00 in the library
- Focus will be on Snap and Read.
- Monday, November 6 - Secondary Curriculum Committee @ 3:30 - 5:00 in Karcher library.
- Tuesday, November 7 - Math team will participate in a PD day learning more about strategy grouping within workshop (Gradual Release of Responsibility Instructional Framework)
- Wednesday, November 8 - End of term 1!
- Friday, November 10 - Grading window closes at 3:00pm!!!
- Friday, November 10 - 7th grade field trip to the Field Museum in Chicago!
- Questions please ask Katherine Botsford and/or Brad Ferstenou.
Looking ahead:
- Monday, November 13 - Special Education Aide meeting
- 2:40 - 3:00 in the conference room.
- Thursday, November 16 - Half day with 1:00 - 3:00 inservice for certified staff.
- We will be holding this inservice in the HS library.
- Thursday, November 16 - Strings Concert @ Dyer @ 6:30pm.
Pictures from this past week!
Poynette Staff Visit!
Students in Ms. Rummler and Mr. Audenby's Social Studies class learning their fate on a specific day as they travel across the country on the Oregon Trail. Students have an amount of money and cannot end up negative. They have to make tough decisions along the way within their "families" depending on choices and circumstances along the way.
Students in Ms. Geyso and Ms. Riggs's ELA class working on revisions to their writing.
Poynette Staff Visit!
How Can We Promote Cognitive Rigor by Asking Good Questions?
Teaching and learning for cognitive rigor is very different from teaching and learning in traditional educational settings that are driven solely by objectives and outcomes. Cognitive rigor prompts and encourages students to think deeply and to express and share the depth of their learning by addressing and responding to good questions that serve as formative and summative assessments and set the instructional focus for learning.
It's an approach that can be applied to both the setting of educational objectives and the development of good questions using the following formula:
Show and tell + HOT Question Stem + DOK Context
The HOT Question Stem correlates to a specific cognitive category of Bloom's Questioning Inverted Pyramid (see the categories in Figure 1.2, p. 12). For example, when a performance objective challenges a student to understand, or one of its correlating verbs in its cognitive category in Bloom's Revised Taxonomy, we can replace the verb with the question stems how or why. These two question stems prompt students to demonstrate and communicate their understanding and encourage them to think strategically (DOK-3) and extend their thinking (DOK-4) beyond the subject matter and situation originally presented in the performance objective—and that's exactly what we want. When converting performance objectives to good questions that promote cognitive rigor, you may find yourself using the question stem how or why often—and that's OK. Challenge yourself, however, to use the other question stems listed within Figure 1.2.
The DOK context addresses both the scope of a learning activity as well as the expected depth of content understanding (Hess et al., 2009a, 2009b). This is typically defined by the noun phrase that follows the verb of a performance objective. It not only establishes the scope of the activity but also sets expectations for how deeply students demonstrate their learning.
Notice how the good questions in Figure 1.6 are derived from performance objectives. The verb of the performance objective is replaced with the appropriate question stem that prompts students to think. The noun phrase following the verb of the performance objective designates the context or depth students must use to explain their learning. These good questions set the instructional focus and serve as formative and summative assessments of a lesson or unit. (We'll discuss how to convert performance objectives into good questions at the end of this chapter.)
Figure 1.6. Making Good Standards-Based Questions
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
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STARTER STATEMENT
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HOT STEM
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DOK CONTEXT
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Distinguish long from short vowel sounds in spoken single-syllable words.
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Show and tell
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what distinguishes
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long from short vowel sounds in spoken single-syllable words?
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Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
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Show and tell
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how
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Analyze how two or more authors writing about the same topic shape their presentations of key information by emphasizing different evidence or advancing different interpretations of facts.
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Show and tell
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how could
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Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.
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Show and tell
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how could you
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write an argument that supports claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence?
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Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases by using context clues, analyzing meaningful word parts, and consulting general and specialized reference materials, as appropriate.
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Show and tell
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what is the reason
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the meaning of unknown and multiple- meaning words can be determined and clarified using the following?
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Count to 120, starting at any number less than 120. In this range, read and write numerals and represent a number of objects with a written numeral.
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Show and tell
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how could you
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Multiply one-digit whole numbers by multiples of 10 in the range 10–90 (e.g., 9 x 80, 5 x 60) using strategies based on place value and properties of operations.
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Show and tell
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how could you
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multiply one-digit whole numbers by multiples of 10 in the range from 10 to 90 using strategies based upon the following?
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Understand that a function from one set (called the domain) to another set (called the range) assigns to each element of the domain exactly one element of the range. If f is a function and x is an element of its domain, then f(x) denotes the output of fcorresponding to the input x. The graph of f is the graph of the equation y = f(x).
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Show and tell
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how
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How Can We Teach with Cognitive Rigor Questions?
Each type of cognitive rigor question guides students to pursue deeper knowledge and respond insightfully to the questions in their own unique way. These questions also allow teachers to act as both the instructor who provides the information students must learn and the facilitator who encourages students to process information into expertise or other knowledge outcomes (including self-knowledge).
- Essential questions set the instructional focus and expectations for students to demonstrate deeper, more authentic learning about universal themes, core ideas, and topical understandings of a lesson or unit in their own unique way.
- Factual questions direct students to read, research, and recognize information about who, what, where, or when.
- Analytical questions challenge students to examine and explain how and why, what is the meaning or message, what is the intent or purpose, what categorizes or characterizes, what determinesor indicates, what are the similarities and differences, and what is inferred, represented, signified, suggested, or symbolized.
- Reflective questions engage students to investigate and inquire what are the cause and effects, impact and influences, reasons and results, and advantages and disadvantages.
- Hypothetical questions prompt students to imagine what if, hypothesize what would happen, what could happen, how may, and how might, and predict what will or how will.
- Argumentative questions involve students in making choices and defending decisions supported with valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.
- Affective questions encourage students to share what do you believe, feel, or think; state what isyour opinion, perspective, or thoughts; or show how could you or how would you address a particular issue, problem, or situation.
- Personal questions motivate students to take the initiative to explore what do you want to learn about the subjects and topics being taught and then share their learning with their classmates.
These cognitive rigor questions (CRQs) can serve as the essential question for a single lesson or even an entire unit. They can also be grouped together using the CRQ Framework (see Appendix A). Clearly all these questions cannot be answered within a single class period since there are just too many of them! However, each question can be asked individually or paired with other questions to provide a deeper, student-centered learning experience that promotes cognitive rigor.
Conclusion
Questioning for cognitive rigor engages students to demonstrate and communicate the deep knowledge and complex thinking skills they can use in both their academic studies and in their personal lives. We can create these good questions simply by rephrasing academic standards and their performance objectives into open-ended, thought-provoking inquiries or devise our own questions to set the instructional focus and serve as assessments for student learning. The CRQ Framework can be used as a resource that not only identifies the kind of questions to ask but also scaffolds questions based upon their intent, purpose, and level of complexity.
The rest of this book explores each question category within this CRQ Framework and shows how each category builds on the others to increase the level of thinking and depth of knowledge—or cognitive rigor—students are expected to demonstrate. We will also address how students respond to these questions and how teachers can assess the accuracy, acceptability, appropriateness, and authenticity of their responses.
