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professional learningQuestioning & Discussion

Getting every student thinking and talking: cold call, higher-order questions, and academic discourse.

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Cold Call & Questioning
15 / 45 min or half-day · Teachers

Questioning is how teachers check thinking in real time, but hands-up only ever reaches the confident few.

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Think-Pair-Share
15 / 45 min or half-day · Teachers

A good discussion protocol turns 'who wants to share?' into 'everyone thinks, everyone talks.' Think-pair-share is the simplest: a moment to think alone, then with a partner, then with the room, so no one hides and every voice gets a rehearsal.

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Academic Discourse
15 / 45 min or half-day · Teachers

When students talk about ideas with each other, using evidence and building on what others say, they think harder and learn more.

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Cooperative Learning
15 / 45 min or half-day · Teachers

Putting students in groups is not cooperative learning.

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Higher-Order Questioning
15 / 45 min or half-day · Teachers

Most classroom questions ask students to recall facts.

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Wait Time & Response
15 / 45 min or half-day · Teachers

After asking a question, most teachers wait about one second before jumping in.

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Learning by Teaching
15 / 45 min or half-day · Teachers

One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it.

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Students Generating Questions
15 / 45 min or half-day · Teachers

We spend a lot of time asking students questions, but the deeper skill is teaching them to ask their own.

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Discussion Protocols & Talk Moves
15 / 45 min or half-day · Teachers

Rich classroom discussion rarely happens by chance, it is built by structure and by the small moves a teacher makes to deepen student thinking.

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Hinge Questions
15 / 45 min or half-day · Teachers

At key moments in a lesson, you need to know, fast and accurately, whether your students actually understand, so you can decide what to do next.

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Debate & Argumentation
15 / 45 min or half-day · Teachers

Few activities push students to think as rigorously as building, defending, and challenging arguments.

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