Strategies
Questioning Skills Development
Cybersites
Known for her powerful books and training on questioning skills, Nancy Johnson from Pieces of Learning reminds us that asking questions is the active part; answering is the passive part. Teachers do most of the asking…and it should be the other way around! As Jamie McKenzie says, "Questions and questioning may be the most powerful technologies of all." (McKenzie, Jamie. Beyond Technology, FNO Press, 2000, p.1)
http://www.piecesoflearning.com
Nancy Johnson's site has materials and good ideas.
http://questioning.org
Jamie McKenzie's site gets at the "primacy of questioning."
When your students have developed great questions, send them to these sites to get great answers!
http://www.madsci.org
Scientist Network includes lots of answers to scientific questions plus references to help develop research questions.
http://www.askanexpert.com
Ask an Expert is a directory of experts willing to answer kids’ questions.
http://www.ala.org/ICONN/kidsconn.html
KidsConnect, developed by the American Association of School Librarians, is a question-answering and referral service for students K - 12.
http://www.askjeeves.com
Ask Jeeves answers all kinds of kids’ questions from research to homework.
Freebies
Want a great strategy to help your students generate good questions? Try this one we learned from Dr. Jann Leppien, University of Great Falls, MT as we improved our own questioning skills.
Purchase blank wooden cubes from any craft store and develop pairs of good question cubes. In red, write "who, what/which, why, when, where, and how" on one cube; in black, write "can, would, is, will, might, did" on the other. Have students work independently or together to toss cubes and generate many questions to lay the foundation (Step 2: Goal Setting) for their research study. Some questions may sound contrived and not too useful; so choose 4 - 6 "keepers" from the list. Click here to download an overhead to use with the good question cubes (pdf).
Try this modification: Change words to suit your study. Or add a third cube with "compare, predict, analyze, illustrate, demonstrate, verify" to encourage even higher level thinking.
WOW! No need to make the cubes yourself! Good Question Cubes are now available from Active Learning Systems–check our online store!
Teacher Tips
- Start your unit with a "ques-cussion"! 3-4 students (one must be the recorder, too) "discuss" a topic by asking questions only - each new questions resulting from the previous one. The team then chooses the most powerful questions to guide their research, or the class comes back together to choose the essential questions that guide the whole class study.
- Don’t direct student research studies with a topic search such as “Find our about acid rain.” That’s only fact gathering. Develop ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS that require thinking! “What strategies will the US need to develop to reduce the impact of acid rain?” Now have students get going on their good follow-up questions.
- "What if" may be the one all-time-best question starter because it generates so many more questions. Take a fact from your unit of study, and ask "what if" with a change of facts. "What if the Pilgrims had landed in Florida?" Watch the thinking happen!
- One attention-getting, thought-provoking question is a great way to pique students' curiosity. "What would have given T. Rex a nightmare?" gets your dinosaur unit off to a bang. "What would your mother pack in your lunch box if you went to school on the moon?" gets 'em thinking for your space unit.
- Use the Good Questions Cubes explained in our freebies.
- Don't forget Bloom's Taxonomy. An oldie strategy that can't be beat.
- Practice short, playful questioning skills in downtime moments - waiting for the bus, in the lunch line, for a rainy day recess–from the resources suggested in cybersites.
- Don't always expect students to answer the questions they ask. Learning to ask questions is good any time; answering is related to specific studies.
- Questions should be part of every step of the research process.
- Have your students practice improving their questions. Rewrite one "good" question 2 - 3 times to reach "better" and "best".
- Questioning games and riddles are fun and get children excited about asking questions.
- Have students make up the questions for the end of unit test using the knowledge they gained in their research.
- Use Alex Osborne’s technique SCAMPER to open up young minds. (He came up with the term “brainstorm”.)
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S |
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substitute |
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C |
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combine |
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A |
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adapt |
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M |
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modify, magnify, minify |
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P |
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put to other uses |
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E |
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eliminate |
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R |
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reverse |
- Remember: Don't do all the asking. Do invite students to ask many questions.
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Working with the Good Question Cubes?
You love using our Good Questions Cubes in your classroom. Now, here’s a recording sheet that we use in our training for you to use with your students.
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Anti-Plagiarism Strategies
Cybersites
These addresses will link you to sites developed by practicing professionals like yourself who have been wrestling with the many problems connected to plagiarism. Often both adults and children are not clear about what constitutes plagiarism. Accidental as well as purposeful plagiarism is a serious practice. Use the definitions, concrete examples, and suggestions for lessons and activities offered by these educators to strengthen your understanding of plagiarism and enrich what you are already doing to train your students in correct research documentation.
Find your own sites too! Type "plagiarism" into your favorite search engine, and see the excellent resources available to you with a click of the mouse. You will find definitions, teaching tools, and detection software.
http://www.virtualsalt.com/antiplag.htm
Strategies to help instructors teach students how to avoid plagirarism
http://www.plagiarism.com
Search to compare student papers against a web-built database
http://plagiarism.phys.virginia.edu/
Center for Studying Plagiarism at the UVA–free software to uncover plagiarized work
http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/
Samples of appropriate and inappropriate use of source texts
http://www.depauw.edu/
Avoiding Plagiarism DePauw University Writing Center–good examples of different student versions in relation to the original material
http://7-12educators.about.com/library/weekly/aa092701a.htm
Do You Teach Students to Plagiarize?–definitions, activities, and links to other helpful sites
Freebies
Students need constant reminders and concrete examples of what plagiarism really is. Teacher Michael Spear offers "Plagiarism: Questions & Answers" (.pdf), a short and to-the-point document about plagiarism written for students (this document is used with permission from: Spear, Michael. ”What is Plagiarism?” Online posting Teachers.net, 24 September 2001, http://www.ehhs.cmich.edu/~mspears/plagiarism.html). This would be an excellent addition to your students' research assignment sheet–with proper documentation and a meaningful discussion, of course.
Teacher Tips
These tips come from our own experience and the good ideas shared with us by other teachers who are working harder and harder to prevent plagiarism in this electronic age. Plagiarism has always plagued teachers as they grade research assignments. With the Internet at hand and students well trained in "cut and paste" techniques (to say nothing of websites that eagerly sell research papers on nearly every topic), the task may seem overwhelming. However, try some of these tips. They really work.
- Be sure students know the definition of plagiarism and get to see plenty of examples as illustrations.
- Tell them "Don't do it!" Be clear about the consequences of plagiarism. Follow through.
See a poster about plagiarism in our online store.
- Let students know that you have the tools to track down electronic plagiarism by using one of the many online sites with web crawlers that search for the original documents (see our list of cybersites).
- Teach them one of the correct bibliographic formats (MLA, APA) and require that a bibliography be part of each assignment.
- Design notefact page headings with bibliography prompts that indicate what information is required for different types of resources.
- Model how to paraphrase, summarize, and quote - with the proper documentation for each.
- Design an assignment where the "answer" can't be found in any one source. A good research question that leads to a thesis statement will require students to analyze and synthesize information for an original end product. (Traditional assignment: Find out about the white-tailed deer. Better assignment: How will suburban sprawl impact the white-tailed deer?)
- Require varied sources for research - not all text sources. It is hard to plagiarize from a field trip, survey, or interview.
- Set check-point dates along the way. Ask for the research question or thesis statement, preliminary findings during research, an outline, rough drafts, and the working bibliography to pace the study and monitor authenticity of student research and thought. (See IIM Teacher Manual - Sec.2, p.20 & Sec.5, p.16 for study plans.)
- Check after 3 - 5 notefacts have been written to see if students are still copying.
- Require that all copies of Internet resources be handed in with the final paper.
- Ask for different types of end products. Plagiarizing won't help students create a play, write a poem, make a working model, or write a "first person" documentary about an historical event.
- Require an oral presentation of findings after reading the paper/report yourself. Prepare some probing questions that the student should be able to answer. DO NOT ALLOW the complete paper to be read.
- Give students the benefit of the doubt by asking questions that will lead to acknowledgment of dishonesty or carelessness. "I was quite surprised by your paper, so I did some investigation into it. Is there something you want to tell me about it before I tell you what I found out?" (R. Harris, Oct. 19, 2001) Access Harris' website for more good examples in "Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers" by Robert Harris, Oct. 19,2001. www.virtualsalt.com/antiplag.htm
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Plagiarism Articles
Make an impression on your students about the seriousness of plagiarism! Show them these articles.
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Preventing Plagiarism in Written Papers
Looking for some ways to prevent plagiarism in written papers? We can help with this list of ideas.
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Getting Middle-Schoolers Excited About Research
Cindy Steven-Pheal is a 7th grade teacher at Oak Grove Middle School in Hattiesburg, MS who has been using IIM since 1999. View her short presentation to see how she engages her middle school students in IIM from the moment they walk through the door! Download it here.
She’s eager to share with you! Contact her at: excelteacher@yahoo.com
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