Writing a Design Brief with Year 7 and 8 by asking questions.

Today with my Intermediate class, we needed to write the design brief for the project that we are going to do this term.
I decided to do this by having them ask questions based around WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN WHY.
I saw this idea  when i was browsing the blog posts of fellow CoL teachers. I read a post from +Hinerau Anderson where she was using these questions to get the students to connect with her website. I thought this would be a good idea to use with the students to write their own design briefs.

So today, we all opened up a blank document instead of me making them a template. I put up the words (WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN WHY) on my document and asked the class to shout out any questions they could think of as we went down the words, one by one. I had already told them that the project was about making a holder / stand for a mobile phone.

Here are the questions that the class came up with together today.
What was good here was that no question was out of place or judged "unworthy" by the rest of the class. No question was a bad question. All input was accepted.

Design  Brief

Who?

Who is the design for?

Who is making the design?

Who will use the design?

What?

What are we going to design?

What is the design going to be used for?

What is the design going to be made from?

What is the purpose of the design?

What do we need in order to make this design?

Where?

Where is the design going to be made?

Where can you put the design when you are using it?

When?

When will the design be made?

When will the design be finished?

When can the design be used?

Why?

Why are we making this design?

Why do we need this design?

The class then went through each question on their own document and answered them. In this way, they have a design brief and reasons for it that they have put together themselves.

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Reading:

"Making Thinking Visible : How to Promote Engagement, Understanding and Independence for All Learners" - Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church and Karin Morrison. Link here to Kindle edition

There is a lot of discussion in the book about letting the students ask the questions rather than answering them.
"when students ask authentic questions, we know they are focussed on the learning and not just the completion of assignments"

Student Voice - End of Term 2

As it is the end of term 2, it is a good time to get some student voice so there is time to act on any problems before the start of term 3.
I have been reading  "Making Thinking Visible : How to Promote Engagement, Understanding and Independence for All Learners" - Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church and Karin Morrison. Link here to Kindle edition

There is a lot of discussion in the book about letting the students ask the questions rather than answering them.

"when students ask authentic questions, we know they are focussed on the learning and not just the completion of assignments"


"asking authentic questions - that is, questions to which the teacher does not already know the answer or to which there are not predetermined answers - is extremely powerful in creating a classroom culture that feels intellectually engaging"

I have not finished reading this book yet but this part about getting the students to be in charge of the questions is a really interesting one and something that I want to look into further next term as part of expanding the students level of thinking.

As a starting point for this, I thought it would be fun to flip the way I got feedback from the students this term. I have decided to get them to ask the questions.  Seeing as we have not done it this way before, I have not expected a huge amount from them and only want 3 questions based on the following things :-

• Think of one question you can ask about the projects that you have been doing so far this year.
• Think of one question you can ask about how the information is given to you about what you have to do when you come in the classroom.
• Think of one question you can ask about the atmosphere in the classroom.

These were the instructions at the top of the form....

Hello.... On this form I want you to read the focus and then think of one question that you want to ask about each of the three sections. I will not be giving you boxes to tick for this as I want you to really think of a question. Please think hard and try not to leave blank or put "i don't know".... thank you.

Here are some of the things they came up with ...

• Think of one question you can ask about the projects that you have been doing so far this year.

Will these techniques I've learnt help me in Year 12 VIS?
Will these shelter projects be useful for future reference?

These answers interest me a lot as they show that the students are thinking about the future and if what I getting them to do is going to be of any use. I need to to try and build into the planning overall, some kind of 3 year course flow so they can see where the skills take them from Level 1 through to Level 3 and then onto courses and jobs to do with design. I know I like to know the point of what it is that I am expected to do so it is the same for the students.

Is art deco reaching the high standard of where i want it to be
Have I done enough
Am I still on track?
I don't necessarily have to know how my speaker works right? like, the wires and stuff.

These questions make it clear that they are worrying about what they are dong and if it is enough or correct. I need to make more reference of the standard breakdowns (example here)

• Think of one question you can ask about how the information is given to you about what you have to do when you come in the classroom.

Is art deco still achieving at the high point?
Why online?
Sometimes I need extra help when i don't fully understand the task we are given
more fun drawing stuff?
Is there other ways to give us information without using google plus?
can we see visual instructions?

It is interesting that they want their instructions in different and visual ways. This appeals to me and will definitely look into doing this more.  I am wondering if the question about "why online?" has come from a student who has come from outside of our cluster of schools as we have been working this way for quite a number of years now and they are used to getting their instructions and information that way.

• Think of one question you can ask about the atmosphere in the classroom.

Is the atmosphere still going or going to stop
Why are the year 12's so loud?
The Atmosphere is fine and fun but productive working space
what do you mean by atmosphere?
Do you like the atmosphere? If not, what can we do to improve it.
why are there more boys than girls?

The boy / girl ratio in the class is often something I wonder about.  My class always seems to have more boys in it than girls.

I am happy that they think they can still work while having fun.

I do worry about the Year 11 students in with the Year 12 and how it is affecting their work rate, and it is interesting that has come up with the "why are the year 12's so loud?" question. 

This has been an interesting way to get feedback as I have more of an insight into how the students are thinking. It was our first time trying this, so I am aware that some of the feedback is not questions or is not very in depth, but I think it is an interesting start and I will definitely be building more of this student questioning into the lessons.

SOLO structured questioning with Year 10 students

I have been thinking about questioning techniques with my students for a while now as a way to effectively analyse the design work of others and their own.
I had thought about question types with the different SOLO levels on this blog post here.
I then started putting together some example questions for my new Year 10 group to use to analyse the design of mobile phones. A great, helpful resource here was the iPad app made by Hook Education - Question Generator. This helped me to categorise my thoughts about this activity into where they should be within the SOLO structure.

Here is the presentation I made for the students to use to break down their questions.

We had a go at this activity this afternoon, and I was pleased with the improved level of thought that the Year 10's put into their analysis. It was quite a small start today, but it is definitely something that I want to build on. We need to get more comfortable with the idea so the students can then use the structure to build better questions of their own for a more in depth analysis. Here are links to some student samples of the day ... Me'e Raihan Misimoa Mary Lonise

SOLO and Asking Questions

We use SOLO Taxonomy to help us to structure our projects in the Technology Department.
My new Year 10 group starts on their next Technology rotation soon, so I am preparing a new project for them. They are going to design and make models of a new mobile phone design.
I have been reading "A More Beautiful Question" by Warren Berger and have become very interested in approaching this new project with the Year 10 group in a new way.

To support this plan, I have been trying to put different questions and question types against the SOLO Taxonomy levels.
It has been an interesting task, getting these differences in types of questions clear in my mind before we approach it as a class.
Our first task as a class will be looking at existing phone designs and analysing them.  I want them to be asking questions about the designs we look at and answering them as a team.

Ask more Questions....

While at GAFE Summit North Island this year, I went to one of +Holly Clark's sessions, "The Right Question".
She recommended the two books illustrated here, A More Beautiful Question and Make Just One Change. I have recently received these from The Book Depository and have made a start on A More Beautiful Question.
I am only into the first chapter so far, but it is already inspiring me to make changes to the Year 10 project that will start with their new Technology rotation in a week's time.
The main focus of the book so far has been to wonder why jobs, businesses, companies etc do not encourage more questioning from their employees and what type of questions lead to change. It is talking about changes in the brain and thought processes that occurs when a problem is approached by a series of questions, instead of any other way.

So how am I going to use this in an immediate way?
At the start of a project, we break down the process into a series of tasks. How would it affect the students if they used questions instead of statements?
The best questions to use are not ones that give yes / no / simple answers.
How can we....?
Why does this ... ?
What happens if ...... ?

Asking the right questions gets more depth of understanding.
For example :-
What colour is a stop sign? - this gives a really simple, one word answer.
Why is a stop sign red and what affect does this colour have on the observer? - this gives a much more thorough understanding of colour theory and how it is used in design work.

I want them to come up with questions that will lead to experimenting, trying things out, modelling, analysing in order to get the answers.
Much as I love Google, I don't want them to come up with questions that they can answer with a quick Google search.

Starting small and getting them to ask questions that they can work towards answering themselves is my plan to get them ready to start answering their questions with creativity and design work, which is a more difficult thing to ask them to do.

Is knowledge obsolete? It is so easy to get hold of any information at all.
It is the questioning of this information that is rising in importance.





The Watson Computer.
We can only get what we need out of tools like this by asking the right questions.