At the January Board of Education meeting Superintendent David Quattrone introduced administrators Heidi Menzel and Adrienne Laitman, who presented the Elementary School program for critical and creative thinking. Their presentation focused on the effort to strengthen higher level questioning in the classroom. Ms. Menzel showed video clips of fourth grade students analyzing reading texts and classifying the kinds of questions they were asking. The goal is for both students and teachers to work with a full range of questions, including both factual recall questions about a particular book and evaluation/reflection questions that require students to go beyond the text.
The program, which was developed by curriculum leaders over this past summer, is called Stepping Up to Questioning. The professional development approach to this work is called lesson study, in which teachers collaborate to develop high quality lesson plans. Peer observation is a key component of the process. Lesson study, first developed in Japan, is a common practice in high-performing school systems in East Asia.
Another aspect of this work is action research. In order to develop solid evidence about student progress, Elementary teachers worked with students from Concordia who recorded classroom data about the range of questions asked by students and teachers. The data was then analyzed for patterns and incorporated into lesson planning. This work will be highlighted for the Tri-State Consortium visit scheduled for early May. Quattrone characterized the work as "state-of-the art and highly consistent with established best practice."
