One of the fundamentals in education is asking questions and receiving answers. Often the answers can end up being of the GWIT (Guess what I’m thinking) kind, and can be useful for checking superficial understanding. But if we want to promote thinking and deeper learning, we need to ask more searching questions, by raising debatable issues and introducing problems which might not even have answers.

The QFT is a simple but rigorous step-by-step process designed to help students formulate, work with, and use their own questions.

A Google Classroom Question can promote learning in a number of ways.

Do you feel about some rubrics the way I do? Many rubrics are vague and/or combine too many different criteria in one box.

Our students often speak and write in a superficial manner that is an indication of lazy thinking. We need to promote deeper engagement with ideas. Instead of using AND to join a series of unsubstantiated ideas, students should be encouraged to use BECAUSE, BUT and SO.

Hattie et al. have written extensively about the power of feedback. In a recent article, Hattie has gone on to try to specify what kinds of feedback work best. The conclusions are as follows.

Mid-year exams provide an ideal opportunity to give effective feedback based on how students have managed their exams. We should use this opportunity (since we return the exam papers to the students) to do more than just mark correct vs incorrect.

Here are 3 key study skills to share with students as they approach exams.

Exam time is an ideal time to bring metacognitive strategies into the learning process. Encourage students to use the exam session to try new/better study methods, especially if it is a mid-year exam that does not count as much as the final exam.

After marking a test or exam, it is good to ask some reflective questions, and not simply take the marks as an objective measure of the students’ abilities. Data analysis is useful but it needs to lead to reflection.