Reverse Your Questions: Energizing Teaching Tools

 

Pick a question that you asked today in class.  Try to reverse the question.  Make the answer the question and the question the answer.  You might notice the question might be a lot more open ended?  Is it a higher level question than your original?    So next time you are making a worksheet, reverse a few of your questions and mix them in along side some of your original type questions.  Then see if your worksheet has a better mix of conceptual and procedural questions.  

Examples
Geometry:  Original Question:  What is the area of this parallelogram given the height is 4 cm and the base is 10 cm?  Reversed Question:  Find the base and height of a parallelogram given the area is 40 square cm.

Algebra:  Original Question:  Solve this equation   5x + 10 = 30  Reversed Question:  Find a two step equation that has a solution of  x = 4.

Precalculus:  Original Question:  What is sin (30 degrees)?  Reversed Question:  Sin of what degree value(s)  give an answer of .5?

PLEASE COMMENT WITH YOUR OWN IDEAS.

The page above is out of the book called "Engaging Teaching Tools"  More information is located at the  the blog post How to Measure Student Engagement?

Partner/Group Work: The Student Engagement Wheel and Energizing Teaching Tools

This is one of the "spokes" of the Student Engagement Wheel.  The Student Engagement Wheel is show below.  Use the Student Engagement Wheel to help you measure the student engagement in your class.  

The page above is out of the book called "Engaging Teaching Tools"  More information is located at the  the blog post How to Measure Student Engagement?

How can you Measure Student Engagement?

Have you ever wondered if your students are engaged in their learning?  I have often wondered this and wondered how I could measure it.  So, some colleagues and I have come up with what is called the "ENGAGEMENT WHEEL."   It is a way to reflect on an hour of your day that you have taught and try to give it an ENGAGEMENT score.  The higher the score the more engaged your class was.  The engagement wheel measures what your students are doing.

 The engagement wheel score is most accurate when looking at the same class repeatedly over a number of days.  This will insure the score's validity.

I have an example for you.  Tuesday during 4th period I received a score of 5.  I filled in the categories that were true for that hour.  I would take samples from a few days in a row to determine where I stand.  Also, from this activity it will become obvious which pie slices you are not doing regularly.

PDF Color and B/W are available with the purchase of  Engaging Teaching Tools Book

THE ENGAGEMENT WHEEL IS FULLY EXPLAINED IN THE BOOK Engaging Teaching Tools  

GET THE BOOK Engaging Teaching Tools The book covers the Engagement Wheel in detail and many more Teaching Tools.    To purchase the book please go to to a website   Amazon  Corwin Publishing  Barnes and Noble

Let me know what you think and how you have used this.  I would really appreciate the feedback.

My Very Best,

Dave