-+Cues,+Questions,+and+Advanced+Organizers

=Introduction: =

Giving students a preview of what they are about to learn or experience helps them activate prior knowledge. This strategy gives students the opportunity to connect what they already know to what they need to know. Questions should focus on what is central and most important. Advance organizers are most useful for information that is not easily presented in a well-organized manner. For example, creating an advance organizer for a field trip can provide students with information about what they are about to see and do.



= Essential Questions probe the deepest issues confronting us. . . complex and baffling matters which elude simple answers: Life - Death - Marriage - Identity - Purpose - Betrayal - Honor - Integrity - Courage - Temptation - Faith - Leadership - Addiction - Invention - Inspiration. =

Essential Questions are at the heart of the search for Truth.


 * Learning increases when teachers focus their questions on content that is most important, not what they think will be most interesting to students (Alexander, Kulikowich, & Schulze, 1994; Risner, Nicholson, & Webb, 1994).
 * Higher-level questions that ask students to analyze information result in more learning than simply asking students to recall information. (Redfield & Rousseau, 1981). However, teachers are more apt to ask lower-order questions (Fillippone, 1998; Mueller, 1973).

Essential Questions offer the organizing focus for a unit. If the U.S. History class will spend a month on a topic such as the Civil War, students explore the events and the experience with a mind toward casting light upon one of the following questions, or they develop Essential Questions of their own. ..

__Examples of Essential Questions:__

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= Subsidiary Questions = These are questions which combine to help us build answers to our Essential Questions. Big questions spawn families of smaller questions which lead to insight. The more skillful we and our students become at formulating and then categorizing Subsidiary Questions, the more success we will have constructing new knowledge.

We have several strategies from which to choose when developing a comprehensive list of Subsidiary Questions for our project: = = = Telling Questions lead us (like a smart bomb) right  to the target. They are built with such precision that they provide sorting and sifting during the gathering or discovery process. They focus the investigation so that we gather only the very specific evidence and information we require, only those facts which "cast light upon" or illuminate the main question at hand. = The better the list of telling questions generated by the researcher, the more efficient and pointed the subsequent searching and gathering process. A search strategy may be profoundly shifted by the development of telling questions. As you can see below. . . students trying to rank the relative safety of ten cities in the Heartland will have greater success with their search if they translate their general question about crime into a Telling Question. This would tend to be true whether they were searching on the free Internet or using an electronic encyclopedia or a pay-for-service collection of new articles. The addition of precise elements to a search can radically reduce wasteful wandering. Questioning Stratagies
 * We can brainstorm and list every question which comes to mind, utilizing a huge sheet of paper or a word processing program or a graphical organizing program such as Inspiration ( [|http://www.engagingminds.com/inspiration] ), putting down the questions as they "come to mind." Later we can move these around until they end up along side of related questions. This movement is one advantage of software. This approach has the benefit of spontaneity.
 * We can take a list of question categories like the one outlined in this article and generate questions for each category. This approach helps provoke thought and questions in categories which we might not otherwise consider.

= Clarification Questions convert fog and smog into meaning. A collection of facts and opinions does not always make sense by itself. = Hits do not equal TRUTH. A mountain of information may do more to block understanding than promote it. Defining words and concepts is central to this clarification process. Examining the coherence and logic of an argument, an article, an essay, an editorial or a presentation is fundamental. Determining the underlying assumptions is vital. > >
 * What do they mean by "violent crime rate?" Do they use the same definition and standards as the FBI?
 * What do they mean by "declining rate of increase?"
 * How did they gather their data? Was it a reliable and valid process? Do they show the data and evidence they claim to have in support of their conclusions? Was is substantial enough to justify their conclusions?
 * Did they gather evidence and data?
 * How did they develop the case they are presenting?
 * What is the sequence of ideas and how do they relate one to another?
 * Do the ideas logically follow one from the other?
 * How did they get to this point?
 * Are there any questionable assumptions below the surface or at the foundation of the argument?