Questioning Works, Except It When Doesn’t

Must teaching always involve asking so many questions? Certainly, questioning students is a time honored approach to teaching and it remains immensely popular. I suppose we owe the popularity of questioning to Socrates, the rst and most famous questioner. Since the...

Design Lessons for Active Engagement

One of the most consistent predictors of student learning is the degree to which students are actively engaged in the teacher’s lesson. It makes sense, even to the non-educator, that an inspired lesson never produces the intended result without an inspired response....

Pause to Practice At the Cusp of Mastery

When is the best time to practice something? Should a teacher build in practice time at the beginning of the instructional period or would it be better to wait until later? Practice is appropriate and beneficial at many points in the school day, but it is particularly...

Do You Like Your Teacher?

It’s a first day of school ritual… peppering my daughter, Emily, with questions about her teachers. “Why do you like her?” On a scale of 1-5, how much do you like him?” She ponders…“a 4 I think.” I probe. ”Why, why a 4?” Emily ponders some more. “I don’t...