10/20/16 Nina Levatino

Today, the objective of the class was as follows; "IWBAT evaluate a discussion question’s ability to probe evidence. IWBAT craft a strong discussion question based on a unifying idea".We then expanded on these ideas by beginning with an activity where we would look at the "good" and the "bad" questions we made with our groups the day prior. Good questions consists of open ended inferences, specificity in reference to a part of the text (evidence), focus on analysis answers in contrast to opinionated answers, and good word choice. Bad questions consisted of questions not based on evidence, with a "yes" or "no" answer, that obscure the real questions, and lack of specificity. Mr. Rivers then gave us 3 questions and told us to rate them as best to worst. Then we were told to actually answer those questions and re-evaluate our initial ratings. We were given two minutes to answer each. Our group had the best conversation with the third question, but came to the conclusion that the first was the best. It was specific, had the ability to incorporate evidence, and had good word choices. At the end of the period, we were introduced to a homework assignment involving our first in-class book, Ready Player One. The idea was to come up with specific textual evidence and base one GOOD question off of it. All of this plays back to the idea of podcasts. We are thinking of GOOD and BAD questions in preparation for our student-created podcasts. We need to know which questions will provoke thoughtful and entertaining answers, rather than dull and spineless.