3 Ways to Honor Questions

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In the middle of a lesson, when I ask “Are there any questions?” my students don’t see it as an honest request of them, but a marker that I am done talking about one thing and ready to move on to another. I suppose I think about it that way myself. The phrase is a transition, not a genuine solicitation.

It’s not that I don’t want to answer the questions they might have.  I can tell when students are puzzled by the look on their faces---the deer in headlights stare, or the unconsciously tilted head and squinched face, or the classic open mouth and lowered brows. I don’t have to ask “Are there any questions?”; I can ask “What is your question?”

     Questions are the doorway to learning. The familiar signs of puzzlement lead me to do my best ‘direct instruction’. Nonverbal cues let me know that I need to find another way to explain what I just explained.  So like a game of “New Choice” improvisation, I try to rephrase what I’ve just said or find a new analogy.

     Not clear about how to organize a speech?  I can tell.  So, think about it this way: sorting information into clearly organized main points is a lot like doing laundry. Sort the colors, darks, and whites into three bins before you proceed. In preparing your information to share with your audience, put like pieces together to figure out the most logical way to present them.

     Wondering how data-claim-warrant arguments work?  If you were, I might explain that the claim is like the canopy, the data is like the handle, and the warrant is the stretcher that connects the data to the claim.

     Puzzled as to why stage right looks like left to the audience? I’d probably make a crack about actors’ egos and explain how the actor’s right and left determine which way is which onstage. If it’s upstage and downstage that have you confused, I might briefly explain how the discovery of perspective led theatrical designers to tilt, or “rake” the stage so that if a Renaissance actor fell down the stage, they literally fell down the stage.

     Getting students to articulate questions is a step up the hierarchy.  The silence that greets me when I poll them for queries isn’t only about communication anxiety; I know no one wants to be the one to ask the only question, or the question that makes the class run longer, but questions that students are genuinely interested in finding the answers to are valuable tools in our classrooms.

     How do we encourage students to ask questions that matter?

First, we have to model the habit of asking questions.  Following up on student comments or responses by asking “Why do you say that?” or “What made you come to that conclusion?” will show them that questions are a part of the learning process.

     Next, we can help them frame good questions as they read and research.  The “5 Ws and an H” that I first learned about in my high school journalism class are still useful. When my students began researching their first Informative speeches this semester, I encouraged them to find the answers to “Who?” “What?” “Why?” “When?” “Where?” and “How” as a way to find their way in to the topic.  When we write persuasive speeches, I use those key words again.  Students write their topic at the top of a sheet of paper and pass it to a classmate.  Each group of 4 or 5 students gets an oversized foam rubber dice (those dollar store dice are useful) with the questions written on each face.  One person in the group rolls the dice repeatedly for about a minute and everyone formulates questions for the topic’s author, scribbling them down until time is up and the sheets and dice rotate for another round.  The exercise gives students some insurance against writer’s block; I tell them if they don’t know what to write, start by answering the questions their classmates have.

     A final way to honor questions is to answer them.  If a question is off topic but genuinely interesting, it may be an educational moment. Google it.  Have a student find the answer on their phone. Promise to ask someone who might know.  Then share the answer with the class.

     Cultivating questions cultivates learning.  Levi-Strauss said that scientists are defined not by right answers, but by right questions. That spirit is one we could be proud to cultivate in our classrooms.

    

    

     

Stealing From Knowledgeable People: Grudgeball

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 First, a nod to Peg Bracken for the title of this series of posts. She called one of the chapters in her classic I Hate to Cookbook "Stealing From Knowledgeable People" and then proceeded to share the tips and tricks she'd learned from other cooks. Next, I'd also like to direct you to the post that inspired this one: Kara Wilkins' "Grudgeball...A Review Game Where Kids Attack!" on her blog, To Engage Them All.

     To paraphrase John Donne, “No teacher is an island...” The best of us wouldn’t be where we are if we didn’t sometimes look to colleagues to find ways to keep our classes interesting, not just for our students, but for ourselves as well. While there are concepts we return to again and again, if we taught the same thing the same way for twenty years, everyone would be bored.  This post is the first in a series about good ideas I’ve stolen…uhm, adapted…from other teachers.

     Pardon me for being Captain Obvious, but the Internet has multiplied our opportunities in an almost unimaginable way.  Without it, I would have never found out how Kara Wilkins created a game called “Grudgeball” to help her middle school students review.  The feedback on the original post indicates that the game has been used and adapted by all kinds of teachers; this is how I’ve used it in my speech and drama classroom.

     Grudgeball basically works like this: students are divided into teams.  Each team gets 10 “x”s on the board.  Each time a group answers a review question correctly, they may erase two “x”s from another team’s stock.  In addition, the team may choose to shoot for the chance to take away more than one “x”.  If a team is knocked off completely, they may play back in by getting the question right and making a basket.

     That’s it. It’s simple.

     Wilkins’ original post shares some of the adjustments she’s made over time, and I made some adjustments for my classroom.  For instance, she uses a Nerf ball and basket.  I set a trash can in front of the board and use a large foam dice for a projectile.  I’ve marked the 2 point and three point lines on my classroom floor with spike tape.  The number of teams is flexible, but you need at least three. In my drama class, we have four, because we have four houses, which I explain here.

     Originally, I used the game to review theater history in my introductory class.  I compiled a list of questions and declared the game would be over when we ran out of questions or the bell rang, whichever came first.  Chaos (and fun) ensued.

     Recently, though, I set up a game to help my students in drama get to know each other better.

     The day before we played, I asked students to write down three facts about themselves that were unique to them but they were willing to share.  For instance, one person wrote “My brother is a freshman at the University of Missouri”, another wrote “I am the shortest person in the class”, while a third wrote “I played Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream this year.”

     The day of the game, the statements became questions: “Who played Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream this fall?” or “Who has a phobia about frogs?”

     As heated as it became, this simple game helped the class get to know each other a little better, created some bonding moments for the houses, and was fun.

     For this game to be successful, a teacher has to be able to tolerate the competitive zeal that erupts once its underway. If you can do that, you'll find it's an energetic way to get students to review or come together as a class.

The Poetry Resolution

     At this point in the year, people often revisit the resolutions made a month ago and either celebrate success or sigh in defeat.  Like many others, I have resolutions that didn’t make it, but there is one that I made a couple of years ago that is still a part of my life.

     I resolved to read more poetry.

     Poetry is an insidious part of our life if we listen to much music, and I remember reading poetry regularly when I was in high school and college.  But it came to me a couple of years ago that I didn’t have enough poetry in my life anymore, so I made a resolution to change that.

A poet, I think, sees the world in a way another writer never does.  A poem is like a photograph of a small space or time composed with an economy of words. 

I don’t know if that tells you what poetry is or what I hope it is.

Poets can cut to the bone the verbiage they use, whereas even the most Hemingway-esque of prose writers must pepper their paragraphs with the blunt objects of prepositions and articles. Poets even set themselves apart from playwrights.  Sure, playwrights have been freed of the chains of description and have to choose words carefully so that actors can translate them into live dialogue or action. But the playwright requires a translator to fully inflate their balloon; their work is meant to be performed, not read, to reach its full potential.

Poets interface more intimately with a reader.

Other than consciously looking for poetry when I visited the library or downloaded an e-book, two things helped me connect with poetry on a regular basis: the poetry app from The Poetry Foundation, and the Poem-a-Day e-mail from the Academy of American Poets.

My friend Kelli shared the poetry app at one of our book club meetings.  The app has a random feature which spins two barrels, producing a slot machine effect when two topics intersect and produce a list of poems. For instance, my latest spin produced over 1700 possible poems on love and commitment for me to peruse, from John Donne up through Gwendolyn Brooks.  Some of the results are audio files with the poets reading their own work, and there is also an option to save your favorites so you can go back to them when the mood strikes. The app is available for download on both Apple and Android devices, and the Poetry Foundation website is worth exploring, too.  They have a section devoted to “Poetry Tours” of significant cities that I wish I had discovered before our trip to Chicago last summer!

     The second way I’ve honored my “More Poetry!” resolution is to subscribe to the American Academy of Poets “Poem-A-Day” series. The program delivers a fresh poem to your digital inbox every day. Weekdays, the poems are unpublished works of modern poets. On weekends, the classics are celebrated.  This website, like that of The Poetry Foundation, has many other resources to explore.

     Review your resolutions if you dare; some of them will endure and some may not.  The fact that this particular resolution is still a part of my everyday life provides opportunities for delight every day.

WIlde About Reading Plays

     I’m sure Oscar Wilde had something to say about novelty, but I am leery of looking it up on the Internet because so many quotations are misattributed. For instance:

Let’s just start by saying that one of the joys of teaching we don’t highlight often enough is the creativity it takes to come up with a new approach. In my drama class this year, I’ve tried to find a way to encourage my students to read more plays.

     I turned to colleagues first, and learned how they approached the problem.  This let me set up a different plan each of the nine weeks to see which approach worked best for our program.  The first nine weeks, it was completely up to the student to pick one of the hundreds of plays from the back cabinet in the drama room, read it, and complete a report.  The second nine weeks, each ‘house’ in the drama class read the same play and had a guided discussion about it.  This nine weeks, the entire class is reading The Importance of Being Earnest, and we are checking in at the end of each act.

     The first nine weeks’ approach felt like a good way to introduce the new play reading requirement.  One advantage was that students could pick literally any play available in the room.  That meant they had hundreds of plays to choose from a collection the previous drama teacher and I built over the course of three decades. I limited their choice by saying they couldn’t read a play we have produced in the last four years or a play they’d read in their English classes.  I had them complete a simple play report when they finished, asking them to consider the narrative arc and find key lines that helped build character.  One of the disadvantages to this approach was that the end product, the report, was not that helpful since they got the questions at the conclusion of their reading instead of before they read.  Another problem was that students had so many different types of plays that the report wasn’t appropriate as a response to all of the choices.  One student might have read a traditional narrative while another read a play built from scenes and monologues with no ‘through story’.

     The second nine weeks I asked each house in the drama class to read the same play.  This time I could control the style of play each group read and the prompts for discussion could be less generic. This second time through, I assigned a one act play to each group and then had them meet and discuss the play using guiding questions.  This approach meant their reflection on the play they had read was more meaningful, but it also meant I had to have enough copies of a variety of plays that everyone had the appropriate script. Having all those scripts available could get expensive over the long run, either for me or for the students if I were to require them to find the plays in question.  I did like the chance to have the houses interact in another way.

     In this third nine weeks, the entire class is reading the same play. I’ve set deadlines to read each act and we are meeting in our respective houses to review the assigned reading in a variety of ways.  One aspect of this arrangement that I like is that it is easier to control for quality of literature.  I can imagine setting up a rotation of plays over a four year period which would help students read a solid canon of classic dramatic literature using this approach, whereas if I always give them free rein to choose, they might choose the easiest plays to read instead of those that challenge them both in form and content.  Another aspect of this approach that I enjoy is the way I asked the students to review.  Instead of providing a list of questions, I set up four stations and rotated the houses through each to respond to a variety of prompts. I tried to vary the kind of thinking required at each one, so that different levels of Bloom’s taxonomy were addressed. In addition, I tried to account for the situation where one student in the group did all the group’s work by making it a rule that there had to be a new scribe at each station.

     At the first station, there was a simple matching task where the students had to match aphorisms from act one to the character who said them.  At the second station, I asked students to indicate how three major characters contradicted reality in the first act (who lied, in other words). At the third station, the group had to imagine the play as a musical and indicate where a character or characters might burst into song and what they might sing.  Finally, the group had to write a sort scene for two characters that might have happened before the play opened.   

     This final approach is my favorite of the three I’ve tried so far. I know the students are reading a significant piece of dramatic literature, I can use the play to amplify their knowledge of theater history by discussing the comedy of manners, the approach to reading is flexible, and the way I set up the review means the students interact with the people in their houses more, helping build community in the classroom.

     I will probably try a fourth approach  in the last nine weeks and then survey students to see which one they appreciated the most before I decide on a consistent way to handle this new aspect of our drama curriculum next year.

Building Houses: Community in Theater

     I’ve always felt that a theater class builds community organically, as the work we do to put up a show brings a group together in a way no other project can.  Producing a show doesn’t always build the most inclusive group, though. There have been semesters when we’ve worked intensely on a show and yet, come finals week, I realize that the lead actor has no idea what the curtain puller’s name is. Separations between class years and even between actors and techies still exist. To address those divisions, I tried a new approach this year and it seems to be paying off.

     Inspired by the houses in the Harry Potter novels, I created four houses for my drama class, each one named after a significant figure in American theater: Taymor, Miller, Bankhead, and Jones.  I tried to balance the namesakes among disciplines, so there is one director (Julie Taymor), one playwright (Arthur Miller), one actress (Tallulah Bankhead), and one designer (Robert Edmond Jones).

     Since I didn’t have access to the sorting hat, I tried to salt each group with a balance of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, as well as dividing students who worked backstage and those who did more acting evenly among the four houses.  One of my goals was to have students interact with people they wouldn’t normally spend time with, so I tried to break up the cliques that naturally develop.

     Once I divided the class into houses, the first project I had them do was to find out who their namesake was and report back to the entire class.  The houses meet sporadically, sometimes for a fun activity (like a round of grudgeball), a team-building exercise, or something more serious (discussing the latest play reading assignment).

     As we near the end of the year, I wonder how to replenish the groups next year, and if each house will find a way to identify itself in the long term. In the short term, I’m happy with the way it’s helped students interact with people they might not usually go out of their way to touch base with in class or during production.