 to share that with them. I'm going to be working with ClickMeetIn to try to make that available, you know, for free. So let's go ahead and jump right in. My name's Lovada Berger. I'm the Deputy Director with the Right Question Institute. I'm really excited to be here with you today sharing the strategy. This is the first series of webinars that we've started. So this one here will just be an introduction. We'll be together for just about 30 minutes or so. And then we may either go through another one based on what you guys share, what would work well and what didn't work, and kind of think about how to improve it. But we will also in the future have webinars that go a little bit deeper into the strategy and focus on the question focus, for example, how to create an effective question focus and other pieces of the strategy as well. But today will be a pretty quick introduction to the strategy. Want to be short right even though it's a webinar and obviously can't see you and we're not actually in the same room. It would be great to be communicating throughout the webinar. So if you're on Facebook, please do tweet at us at Right Question. You can also use the chat feature here. I really encourage you to do that. I'll be looking at it as we're going throughout sessions. So if you have questions, thoughts, reflections, please feel free to share them there. So the plan for the webinar will start off just going into the big picture about question formulation and why that's a key skill that's important for each of us to develop. Then we're going to go into an actual experience in the process. So this we're going to do as individuals. I'm actually going to ask that you guys get a piece of paper or a pen ready or pull up a word doc that you can actually go through the strategy to get using. In this one it's fine if you go through it as individuals. In most cases in the classroom it's done in the group. But I really want to give you the opportunity to go through that just so you can experience it. Then we're going to go and look at the strategy a bit more to really think about what's behind the strategy and why does this actually make a difference. And we're going to finish off just with some words really reflecting on the bigger picture and how this is relevant even beyond the classroom. So again as we're going through you have any questions feel free to type them into the chat area I will be looking at that. Or I think you can actually say if you want to raise your hand and then we can actually go through if you would like to actually share your question aloud. Great I see so Drew and I'm not sure are you referring to people here who are actually participating he's interested in knowing how many people are teachers admin or consultants. I'm in a generous sense most of the people that we work with the largest chunk are administrators so we send to partner with school districts or organizations around the country and then we'll go in and provide a training to their entire group of teachers. So yep so I see you guys you can share if you're a teacher or a consultant or a parent. That's awesome and parents often use the strategy you know even with their kids or when they're homeschooling or anything like that. Really so a lot of teachers today, tonight. So we're going to go ahead and jump right in in the interest of time. I'm the question formulation technique or more so the broader right question strategy really started from work with low income parents in 1990 in Lawrence, Massachusetts and our co-founders Dan and Lou's heard over and over again from the families they were working with that oh we don't go to the school because we don't even know what to ask we don't feel comfortable there is not a welcome in place. So they you know gave them over the brilliant idea and they decided to give the parents give the families questions each time a different situation would come up. So if a parent was going to the school to work with their child because they just received the REP Dan and Lou's would come up with questions that they could use if they needed to go to the school I'm just to talk about report cards Dan and Lou's would come up with questions and they realized that they were creating dependency and that was not at all the goal right they also learned from parents that they were most effective when they focused their questions on decisions. So they developed two frameworks one is the question formulation technique which we're going to dive into today and the other is the called framework for accountable decision-making. I'm in that work right now really happens in a lot of different sectors including healthcare in terms of patients really advocating for themselves and being partners in their healthcare and family engagement really tied to the roots of the organization and providing strategies for parents to be partners in their children's education and to really play a role at the school building. Innovation with organizations such as Microsoft and a few others and that wrote that work really far when RQI was featured in the book a more beautiful question is really centered around idea of what does it take to be an innovator a change maker I'm a creator in this world. So the work in education really started just a few years ago maybe around 2010 at that time there was a small group of teachers actually using the strategy in their classroom and Harvard Education Press I'm approached the co-founders here and say we really want to share this strategy with more educators would you write a book and include the strategy in there and since then educators all around the world have been using the strategy including potentially many of you. So when we think about why questions are important just beyond the fact that when you ask your own question you're more curious and more likely to kind of see that information and just kind of eat it up we there was a survey of college presidents a few years back and what the findings kind of came to the conclusion that questions were important but the interesting thing was that two college presidents in particular really noted that by the time students graduate from college they should know how to frame a question how to ask their own question and how to figure out which questions are the right questions our standpoint is that we agree with that right we think that that would be awesome but we also think that we need to start building that skill from a very young age you know and it doesn't necessarily take $200,000 in debt to really go through and develop that skill set. So take a look at this right this is something I'm sure many of you are familiar with and it's just the idea that I'm in this is focused on the United States of this chart here but that most students most of our population reach the basic skill level right so this isn't talking about high level skills just the basic skill level in reading and writing by the time they're 18. Now take a look at this next slide when what you may notice here is that right once students get to the school age around four or five six the number of questions that the ads start to dramatically decline right we know this happens for many reasons when you're a little kid you want to know you know why is it sky blue is there got different questions like that and as you start to get older you may start to feel like you have answers to those questions but we also know that even when students have questions they have they're wondering or they have things they don't know they are less likely to actually ask those questions in the classroom setting so what we've been working on is really thinking about how do you kind of codify this strategy in a way that simple teachers can learn it one day and use it the next day and that really gets at this big idea that students are more successful when they learn to ask their own questions right that's in the classroom that's as they're navigating college as they're navigating any sort of process if they're asking their own questions and seeking that information they are much more likely to be successful and just to share a quick quote with you this the bottom one is from a Niquiri Remedio summer school student out in Boston and he shared with us that the way that after he used the strategy it made him feel smart because he was asking good questions and giving good answers right so if you just imagine for yourself put yourself in that student's feet footsteps choose rather just what that feeling really means right as a student who at this time was in summer school was on the path to kind of stand back potentially but actually had an opportunity to experience a process that made him feel smart and feel like he was engaged in starting to ask good questions and another student just sort of commented that when you're the one asking the question you feel like it's your job to get the answer so quickly we're about to get ready to jump into the process but just to share a little bit the question formulation technique is a step-by-step process i'm going to show you the steps as we go through the process but it's really focused on students or other individuals producing their own questions improving their questions and strategizing on on actually how to use their questions i love the conversation going on down there um so let's get ready to jump in to actually using the strategy make sure you have a pen and a paper ready to go or that you just have a word doc open that you can go through as we're going through the steps so i'll give you about 30 seconds just to go gather those materials if you want to do that now great so let's go ahead and get started i'm the first part of the question formulation technique is the rules for producing questions so there are four rules you can take a moment and read them over really want to point out even as you're doing it as an individual um when you get to do not stop to answer judge or discuss that still applies right don't and don't respond to any of your questions i'm don't judge any of your questions so as they come to your mind write them down exactly as they're coming um if you want to change it that's now a new question so make sure you're getting that down what would be and feel free to respond in the chat area which of these rules would be most difficult for you to follow which of these rules would be most difficult for you to follow right and i'm seeing a lot of people sort of saying rule number two do not stop to answer judge or discuss and a lot of time but that is one of the more difficult rules because we're kind of in this mode of responding to questions or saying oh that was a good question or just like uh you know or what if we reword it this way um so that is a really important rule to make sure that you're not judging any of the questions even your own questions and then when we think about um when you're at a recorder right so that is a case especially if there are a lot of questions happening the challenge can be in writing a question exactly as I stated the challenge can also be in asking as many questions as you can right so that's one other thing to um to keep in mind and they're not always individually recorded right so if you're doing it in the group format um usually you'll choose one recorder for that group and they'll actually write down everyone's questions in some cases if it's done using technology they're typing the questions or different things like that but when you do it as a group you are usually recording each of the individual questions together so let's go ahead and jump into the process I'm the first part of the process is what we call a question focus and it's really just a prompt that either the teacher or whoever is facilitating that day uses us to solicit questions so the question focus we're going to be working with tonight is some students are not asking questions so again the question focus is some students are not asking questions I want you to take about three minutes individually or if you're sitting next to someone that's fine as well um and just actually go through and ask as many questions as you can making sure to follow the other rules and make sure to number your questions as you go three minutes you're writing questions about some students are not asking questions about 30 more seconds okay so let's keep moving um so now that you've had an opportunity to actually produce your questions right now we're going to go to the next step in the process which is categorizing your question at this stage we focus on closing open-ended questions and we use the simple definition that closed-ended questions can be answered with yes no or one word response and open-ended questions require more explanation usually when those you ask a question at can be replied to with a list of pieces of information we include that as a closed-ended question as well so now i'm going to give you about a minute to go through and label each of your questions as closed or open I'll mark the closed questions with a C and mark the open questions with an O about one minute for that so now let's come back together and actually chat for a bit and literally put chats in the chat box what are some of the advantages of closed-ended questions what are some advantages of closed-ended questions so you get faster answers they're easier to answer quick answers to simple problems easy and quick answers what are some of the disadvantages of closed-ended questions what are some of the disadvantages of closed-ended questions often definitive can clarify the boundaries of the topic hmm do not promote thinking in some depth they can be biased not encourage discussion limited understanding what about open-ended questions what are some advantages of open-ended questions create depth can lead to more questions make brains work may have more than one answer promote critical thinking um promote intellectual reflection wonder in explanation can open possibilities what about disadvantages what about disadvantages of open-ended questions go off on tangents off topic too much time go go off left field get off topic overwhelm learners you might not reach your learning goal says the chemistry teacher could be random so I actually want you to go through and improve your questions right so take a look at your questions and think about which of them could be improved from changing one closed-ended question into an open question and from changing one open-ended question into a closed-ended question so take a moment choose one question one question that question that's question that's closed the question and close it down about one minute for that so now we're going to move to the next step and we're going a bit faster than you but if you were facilitating just in in terms of timing and because you're doing it as individuals versus in the classroom in most cases you would be doing it in groups um so now let's go through and take a look at your questions and prioritize your questions so choose three questions that you would consider most important and when you're prioritizing think about your question focus some students are not asking questions about one minute for this one thing to point out just in sort of reflecting on closed and open-ended questions you all pointed out advantages and disadvantages of each and we really just emphasize that both closed-ended and open-ended questions are important and valuable so there are some situations we would be working with low-income families and they would tell us things like you know when you go to the welfare office it's really important for you to be able to add very sharp closing to questions so that you get the specific information that you need but in other situations it's really important to be able to identify those open-ended questions um that that really open up the explanation so it's really just emphasizing that both types of questions are important and are valuable for learners and for us um as adults as well so now I just want to take a moment and just here I'm again I'm going to share in the chat what did you learn so far right so that's the the process pretty much in a nutshell what did you learn so far and I see some thoughts coming up and wanting to give you some time just reflect on that as you're going through the process like what are you learning as we're going through this together thank you so let's go to like go through and actually unpack um the question formulation technique so these are the different components thank you Beth thank you Linda these are the different components of the question formulation technique the question focus then you go through produce your questions improve your questions prioritize them discuss next steps and reflect as a teacher or a facilitator right whatever whatever role you have there are a few things you plan before you actually go into the the classroom or into the meeting you come prepared with the question focus right and that's linked to your teaching goals for that particular session you come prepared with the instructions to prioritize the question so we use the basic instructions that choose the three questions that are most important but you can actually change that up right you could say choose the choose one question to write your research people on or choose three testable questions etc there are a lot of different ways you can do that you can overlay bloom taxonomy right and say choose three questions that fit in certain categories um and you also come prepared with the next steps so you already know how you're going to have students or your staff members participating what you're going to have them do with the next steps and I see that in there as I see um Drew and a few others making note about reflection reflection is exactly where the learning happens right so it's really important that we don't skip that step and that we students actually go through um and talk about what they learned going through the process um and what they're taking from it the biggest change here is really just the fact that you're giving students an opportunity to ask their own question this is not to say that teachers or administrators would never ask another question that would just be silly this is really about students having that spacing that opportunity to really start to build their question ask skills so that they're actually asking questions um in your classroom and beyond right beyond those sessions when you're using the question formulation technique behind the process there are three key thinking abilities and I saw some of this come up as you guys were sharing um different responses the first one is this diversion thinking and that really starts to happen when students are producing their own questions um because they are going in many different directions but centered on that question focus that you created right but as students start to share their questions they're listening to each other and they're getting ideas for other questions that they could ask and the other is convergent thinking and convergent thinking really happens when students are starting to prioritize when they're starting to really narrow down the questions that they have and the third is metacognition right so this is really this really starts to happen um it happens throughout the process but when I asked you what rule would be difficult for you to follow right so you're thinking about your thinking when um you go to that reflection piece again you're thinking about your thinking um even in the prioritization there's a step that we didn't really go through or not a step but a part of that step where you talk about your rationale for choosing those questions as priority questions and so now I want to share a few examples with you just so you can get a sense of what this looks like um in classrooms from early education to the higher grades the first example I'm going to share comes from a kindergarten class in Maryland I'm the teacher there really wanted to use it as a pre-reading text a pre-reading hook just thinking about the focus on information text and common core and other pieces like that so take a look at this question focus and think about what questions come to your mind take a look at this question focus what questions come to your mind just think about it so now take a look at some of the questions that students came up with and these are kindergarten students um and they did as a whole group so the teacher was the recorder and some questions include is the alligator camouflaged is it a mom or dad crocodile um where are they going why are the baby alligators eyes white and the mom's black right so you can start to get a sense of um the understanding of things that students are paying attention to that level of detail you can also start to get a sense of misconceptions that they may have some of them think it's a crocodile some of them are saying alligator so really get an opportunity to discuss their questions the next example I'm going to show is from middle school um and it's from a social studies classroom this teacher also used a photo and it was before students were actually going to go in and read this photo is of the the Canaan of Sumner so again just take you know 10 15 seconds what questions come to your mind and these are some of the questions that students ask um why are they fighting are they a part of the government were they signing anything um why didn't they call 911 was this related to slavery who hid who first and um why are they smelling so if you take a look at the background here you can see some people in the background sort of laughing and smelling at the situation so students are really paying attention to that detail but they're also trying to make connection to um previous work that they learned about in this course and really get at some of the key issues right and then there are a lot of questions that are just questions that would probably the forefront of a middle schooler's mind right like who did who first how did this all go down um the last example I'm going to show today comes from a math classroom a high school math classroom and this was really centered on a slightly different purpose the teacher wanted students to get the sense that mathematics almost similar to science right is a problem solving um field and then when they approach it they should be approaching it as a problem solving tool that they can use so he actually used a question focus equation equals balance take a moment think of some questions these are some of the questions this is from one of the groups um they ask the last question always is hilarious to me will we ever see this in the future right so students often want to know like how does this what we're learning in this class relate to broader topics they also ask questions like does it have to be an equation how do you get an equation to balance what exactly is balance right so that conceptual understanding that they're looking for comes out there as you'll see um there are a lot of different ways that educators use the strategy some of them are using it for projects independent work um to analyze problems to start to kind of get questions for socratic seminars or there are a ton of different reasons that educators decide to use the strategy i'm going to share with you now just a really quick like this is um really really quick video of the strategy in practice today we'll be doing the question formulation technique i'm not going to be doing any of the generating questions that all that work is on them i'm not going to be doing any of the generating questions that all that work is on them it continues that that creative process and it makes them realize well they all have something to contribute it's no one asks the same question you see the transformation they take ownership of the questions that they created more than the ones that i created for them because it's like look you guys have just done this really hard work you've just generated your own questions and typically that's my role as a teacher right and so i think that public recognition is really important no question no matter how small it is whether it's a closed question open no question no matter how small it is whether it's a closed question open question it's really not a dumb question that's really my main thing now scenario you think you need to ask a question in life great so one thing really again that was just like a very short version is a longer version on the website if you're already a network member you can easily access it on the research resources page if you're not already a member you can easily join it's free um and get the whole or a longer version of that um session so just start to wrap up just wanted to share you know the bigger idea i'll definitely send the link as well it's really about getting students not only to ask their own questions and to get to better answers and to be more engaged in ownership but it's really to get them to be driving their education right driving what they're learning in the classroom to really spark their their desire to be a learner and really spark that curiosity and inquiry in them but it's also where the joy in it when people are working together in groups there's just fun and there's fun and learning for the students and for the teachers but even goes beyond that and it connects to democracy right this idea that we need to be taught to study rather than to believe and to inquire rather than to affirm so as an educator you have a very unique position because you are in the place to really spark that desire to study that that desire to inquire rather than just be recipients of information you really have that unique role this this is actually a photo of miss Clark who was doing this work in the south work with African Americans illiterate African Americans and really pushing them to inquire about the world and really be learners especially during a time when they didn't have access to education new resources so wanted to share again these are free resources on the network you go to the website you click on educator network you go to resources the video is there as well as other free resources such as power points and things you can use in your classroom and i see some folks already about it we do have the summer conference coming up on july 13th and 14th of this year and the fees are there they're a limited number of partial scholarships available for educators working in low-income school districts and for educators of color if you're interested please just email me i'm after this and i'll be in touch with you pretty soon we'd love to actually get each of you to fill out a quick poll it'd be really helpful just as we're thinking about webinars in the future and making sure that we're providing the best resources information that we could this is the first time so you and the group before you were really guinea pig in some way so really looking to get your information and to figure out what we can do to improve the webinars so again thank you so much for your time feel free to email me to post any questions in the chat or to tweet at us now be responding to them in the next or in the next day or so i'll leave the group open for the next five minutes just so that you can actually ask any questions you have in