Questioning

When anyone thinks of a typical math class, they immediately think of a teacher at the board talking and writing while students are taking notes. Then, students get 40 problems for homework and that's it. However, Krystal and I are trying to do things very very differently.

At times, questioning in math is very direct. There are often right or wrong answers with no wiggle room. However with enough preparation, there are plenty of opportunities for students to be creative in their responses. In comes the Geometric Proof Portfolio. Krystal and I worked on this Portfolio for over 3 hours one afternoon. The time grading was much much larger. However, with our portfolio, we gave students the opportunity to express their knowledge in a way that there wasn't just a right or wrong answer. In the portfolio, they were able to draw, describe, explain, and answer questions in a much better way than a multiple choice test. 

During the Questioning session at our in-house PD and the PD Krystal and I attended, we talked about the Webb's Depth of Knowledge. The program the county uses to make tests have DOK levels printed for multiple choice tests. Most of the levels are 1 and 2... Use, Recall, State, Tell, Infer, Construct, Summarize. However, most of our questions in the portfolio questions fall under the 4th level... Design, Synthesize, Create, Critique. 

While most students did not receive high grades on this portfolio, I was very impressed with the ones that did. Most students lost points for not following directions. Laziness, the fact they "had to" do it over Spring Break (even though they were given an entire class period to work on it), and not paying attention to detail were the biggest causes of low grades. 

High-level questioning can be tough, but with enough planning (and Starbucks), great work can be achieved!