Powerful Questions for Learning and Innovation

Polly PatrickAngela Peery March 23, 2015

MEET – GREET – ENGAGE

1. What is your name?2. What is your current position?3. Complete the following statement:

“This seminar will be a success if…”

Learning Intentions

1. Explore the power of effective questions.

2. Investigate listening to the answer as even more critical than asking the question.

3. Connect questioning with innovation.

What questions would you ask?1. What is an example of how you would use each? 2. Be ready to share your examples.

brief, clear reflective

empoweringdivergent

Section 2

EngageClarify Thinking

Deepen Understanding

Find the five-pointed star.

Bottom-upprocessing

Top-downprocessing

What just happened?

How do I feel?

Am I interested?

Is this important?

Key Questions

Can I do this?

Marzano, Pickering, and Heflebower, The Highly Engaged Classroom

We must capture each student’s mental attention, form questions, facilitate discussion, and provide feedback to students between questions in order to keep the learning going forward… Ask, Don’t Tell, p. 23

Section 3

Engage

Clarify ThinkingDeepen Understanding

How do questions bring clarity?

What questions would you ask?

…Clarity comes more readily when we structure questions so that students can

• “hear” their own thinking, • take it apart, and

• then put it back together, • incorporating new learning.

Ask, Don’t Tell, p. 25

Section 4

EngageClarify Thinking

Deepen Understanding

“Homework in primary school has an effect of around zero. In high school it’s larger. (…)

Which is why we need to get it right. Not why we need to get rid of it. It’s one

of those lower hanging fruit that we should be looking in our primary schools to say,

“Is it really making a difference?” If you try and get rid of homework in primary

schools many parents judge the quality of the school by the presence of homework.

So, don’t get rid of it. Treat the zero as saying, “It’s probably not making much of a difference but let’s improve it”. Certainly I

think we get over obsessed with homework. Five to ten minutes has the

same effect of one hour to two hours. The worst thing you can do with homework is give kids projects. The best thing you can

do is to reinforce something you’ve already learnt.”

*Do you agree/disagree with the author, speaker, etc.? *What inferences, interpretations, and/or connections can you make? *Do you approve or disapprove of this (past or present) policy, person, or movement? *What lessons can we learn? *What problem(s) does the study of this topic, person, or policy help or solve? *What can we infer about this author, speaker, time, place, or culture?

Mike Schmoker, 2006, as quoted in Ask, Don’t Tell, p. 124

Section 5

Listening—A Questioner’s Partner for Power

Components of Communication

practice

Intended message

Perceived message

Feedback

Connection: Listening Strategies

Jim Knight, 2007

Inner silence

What contradicts our assumptions

Communicate our

understanding

Practice everyday

clarifying

Practice with terrible listeners

Section 6

Applyquestioning meets innovation

Innovative thinking happens differently for different people….

If you’re the type of thinker who likes to take mental leaps and consider yourself a global thinker, a great idea might come to you as you take a shower or make a meal.

If you’re the type who likes to think through things sequentially and consider yourself more of a part-to-whole thinker, a great idea might come to you after you have a lot of information or data.

What type of innovatorare you?

Ask yourself…

Analytical How could I design a system for this? (for ex., Facebook)

Structural How could I organize this? (for ex., Ford Motors)

Social How can I affect people? (for ex., Panera Bread Co.)

Conceptual How can I make this beautiful? (for ex., Steve Jobs and Apple)

Another way to innovate…

• Apply a template

• Think solution-to-problem, not vice versa

Templates• Addition

• Assigning an additional task to an existing component -giving it a new job in addition to its existing job

• Subtraction• Removing an essential component and keeping only

what is left

• Multiplication • Making a copy of a component but changing it in some

way

• Division• Dividing a component out of the product and putting it

back somewhere else, or taking the component and physically dividing it

Applying Templates

• Addition – cell phones that function as cameras, gloves that work to text and type

• Subtraction – TV series that removed the networks and the timed episodes (like on Netflix)

• Multiplication – table tennis “paddles” that you wear on your hands (the paddle part has been split apart into two surfaces, and the paddle becomes an extension of your arm)

• Division – watches that allow you to change bezels, straps, etc.

What did you learn?

Where do yougo from here?

“This seminar will be a success if . . .”