Is there a more common question than:
What do I do with my early finishers?
I certainly asked it myself.
But, I do believe that I was asking the wrong question. I should have been asking, “Why are my students finishing so darn fast in the first place?“
My Questions Led Nowhere
When I look at my old questions (you can find a whole series about that here), I typically see low-level, one-off questions like:
- What was the story’s main problem?
- Put these events in the correct order…
- What is the difference between a producer and a consumer?
- 12 × 17 = ____
These questions led nowhere. Once a student answered them, there’s no clear next step. Of course students had to ask me what to do. And I just wasn’t prepared!
Aim Higher
These goals are all about memorizing and explaining something that we already know. All of my brightest students will give me the same answer! That’s a huge clue that I’m aiming too low. These are all okay opening questions. They can be the start of something. But, golly, I needed to aim a bit higher, right? I needed somewhere for students to go once they could memorize a definition!
So, I learned to never ask one-off questions! If I ask one question about “producers vs consumers,” I should ask three or four questions that climb up Bloom’s Taxonomy. I needed to prepare sequences, not one-offs. I wrote much more about sequences here.
For example:
Story’s Problem Rather than asking “What was the story’s main problem?” I’d want students to think about other stories that have a similar problem. Did they also have a similar solution? Can we group stories based on their problems? (More about this particular sequence here.)
Order The Events Instead of stopping at “put the events from the story in the correct order,” I want to get students thinking about “What would have happened if Event Z occurred before Event X.” More about this particular sequence here.
Instead of “What is the difference between a producer and a consumer?” I want students to consider what a producer might think about a consumer. And vice versa. That’s a task over at Byrdseed.TV.
Instead of dozens of calculation questions, I want my students to use their calculations to make a tricky decision. An example of that is here.
Thinking, Not Just Content
As I create sequences, I’m moving away from, “I want my students to understand something.” I’m moving towards: “I want my students to think in a particular way about something.” The particular content I’m teaching (plot, producer vs consumer, multiplication) becomes secondary. The way I’m using Bloom’s Taxonomy takes the focus. I wrote more here about focusing on thinking rather than content.