1. Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers
Looking closer . . .
Chapter 10
Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers
Discuss characteristics of a
“good” question.

2. Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers
Activate prior knowledge and you increase learning
Our background knowledge can influence what we perceive.
(Brewer and Treyens, 1981)
30 students were each brought individually into a room and told that it was the office of a professor who was conducting an experiment and asked to wait. After 35 seconds, the students were taken to another room and asked to write down everything they could recall about the office.
Be aware that asking questions to spur prior knowledge before introducing material increases learning for students.

3. What Students Remembered
29 out of 30 remembered a desk and chair
8 out of 30 recalled a bulletin board and skull
9 recalled books – which were not there!
Students’ prior knowledge about what they expected to see in a professor’s office affected what they were able to recall. Cues, questions, and advance organizers are three techniques that call upon students’ prior knowledge.

4. Research and Theory on Cues and Questions
Focus on IMPORTANT, rather than unusual information
Several studies have shown that teachers have a tendency to structure questions around unusual information, in order to capture students’ attention. Ironically, research by P.A. Alexander and others indicates that the more students know about a topic, the more they tend to be interested in it. Questions that help students deepen their understanding of a topic will actually increase their interest.

5. Research and Theory on Cues and Questions
Questions that require students to analyze information produce more and deeper learning than questions that simply require students to recall or recognize information.
According to several studies, most questions teachers ask are lower order in nature.

6. Research and Theory on Cues and Questions
Utilize wait time
Wait time can increase depth of students’ responses and lead to more student discourse and more student-to-student interaction.
Different types of wait time could include the pauses before or after a teacher or student speaks.

7. Research and Theory on Cues and Questions
Incorporate questions before, during and after learning experiences
Questions can be used after a learning experience to assess learning or before a learning experience to establish a “mental set” to aid students in processing new knowledge.

8. Classroom Practice - Explicit Cues
“Today, we are going to talk about . . .”
Cues are straightforward ways of activating prior knowledge and giving students a preview of what they are about to experience.

9. Classroom Practice – Questions that Elicit Inferences
Things/People
Actions
Events
States of Being
Here are some sample questions.
Things/people: Does this thing have a particular value or use?
Actions: How does this action change the size or shape of a thing?
Events: At what point in history did this event take place?
States of Being: What are the changes that occur reaches this state?

10. Classroom Practice - Analytical Questions
Analyzing errors
Constructing support
Support a conjecture through examples and logic
Prove a conjecture through use of established theorems or rules
Some questions require students to analyze and even critique the information presented to them.

11. Good Questions for Math Teaching
These books are available from the district SAM participants.

12. Research and Theory on Advance Organizers
Effect sizes
Important, not unusual
Higher-level rather than lower-level thinking
Information that needs organizing
In earlier chapter presentations from Marzano you heard the greater the effect size the greater the percentile gain.
Stress the important not the unusual.
Ask higher level questions that spur thinking and learning.

13. Classroom Practice In Advance Organizers
Expository Advance Organizers (describing the content)
Narrative Organizers (telling the information in a story format)
Skimming the Text (read the bold print or summary)
Graphic Advance Organizers
An advance organizer is like a complex cue, but with the following characteristics:
More general and abstract than the information to follow
Not the same as a summary or overview
Think of it as “creating the file system” – see example on page 120
Use graphic organizers that accomplish the task you want kids to learn. There are lots of different kinds. Choose the one that works best for your purpose. Skimming information, graphs, venn diagrams, flow charts, narratives before instruction can improve learning .

14. Cues, Questions, & Advance Organizers
Educational researchers have shown that the activation of prior knowledge is critical to learning of all types.
Cues, questions and advanced organizers help students retrieve what they already know about a topic.