CPS Scenarios
K-12 teachers who are using the Classroom Performance System (CPS) during
instruction are finding that their students are demonstrating dramatically higher
learning outcomes and academic achievement than without CPS. However, we are
finding that the key to this success is not merely in the use of CPS, but rather in
specifically HOW teachers are using CPS. In other words, the increased learning
outcomes are a result of enhanced instruction facilitated by CPS, not merely in the use
of the technology.
To maximize meaningful learning with CPS, instructors must become adept in using the
questioning and discussion techniques that are enhanced by the back-and-forth flow of
data that CPS allows. The following pages highlight some of the most powerful and
important techniques that our customers have shared with us. They are described as
scenarios that take an instructor through the workflow of CPS (Prepare, Engage,
Report) to help them make future instructional decisions based on the data CPS
provides.
This paper highlights many of the powerful strategies outlined in Will Thalheimer’s
comprehensive guide on using questions to facilitate classroom learning. It focuses
primarily on the techniques that are most useful in a K-12 setting. Each scenario lists
the strategy so you can refer to Thalheimer’s paper for further information.
Source:
Thalheimer, W. (2007, March). Questioning Strategies for Audience Response Systems:
How to Use Questions to Maximize Learning, Engagement, and Satisfaction.
CPS Scenarios 1

Grades K-2 Example: Phonics Instruction
Scenario
Mrs. Larufa, a first grade teacher, spends a portion of her reading block helping
students understand the role phonics plays in being able to read new words. (Phonics is
a method of teaching beginning readers use to read and pronounce words by learning
the sound of letters, letter groups, and syllables.) Three times a year she administers a
phonics assessment to each individual student to help her identify his or her strengths
and weaknesses. The assessment takes a week of her reading instruction to complete
because of the one-one time she needs to spend with each student. When she began
using CPS she wondered if it could help her complete this task more quickly and give
her the immediate feedback she needed to group her students for instruction.
CPS Solution: Prepare
1. Stage one of the phonics assessment was a rhyming test. Traditionally, all of the
questions were asked verbally and students simply needed to respond yes or no.
Mrs. Larufa quickly created a FastGrade answer key for the twenty-question test
using the Yes/No template so she could administer it to her whole class at once.
2. Stage two of the phonics assessment was a phoneme isolation test. Students were
asked to identify pictures that had the same beginning, middle, or ending sound as
a spoken word. Mrs. Larufa chose to create a lesson with the multiple choice 2
question-authoring template. She used graphic answers so students could identify
the answer as a picture (image 1).
(Image 1)
CPS Scenarios 2

There were two pieces of information Mrs. Larufa wanted to know from
administering this section of the test. She wanted information on which students
had difficulty with beginning, middle, and/or ending sounds. She also wanted to
know which vowel sounds the students had the most trouble with when she tested
the middle sound. She decided to align each question to a standard, but when she
explored the state standards they were too broad and general about phonemic
awareness.
Instead she chose to create her own standards. They were very simply: beginning
sound, middle sound, ending sound, long A, short A, long E, short E, long I, short I,
long O, short O, long U, and short U. Each question was aligned to which sound
placement it tested (beginning, middle, or end) and each middle sound question was
also aligned to the vowel sound it tested (image 2).
(Image 2)
CPS Scenarios 3

CPS Solution: Engage
1. The Teacher Led Engage Mode was used to administer the rhyming test. Mrs. Larufa
engaged the lesson she created in FastGrade and verbally spoke each question as
seen in the following examples:
Question 1: Does duck rhyme with truck? Press A for Yes and B for No.
Question 2: Does bee rhyme with mitt? Press A for Yes and B for No.
(Note: Some people like to use the IR pads at the primary grade levels since the pads are less
complex. Blue painter’s tape can be placed around the unused buttons only exposing the A and B
buttons if you feel the other choices are too distracting to young learners.)
2. The phoneme isolation test was engaged using the Teacher Instruction Engage
Mode. Mrs. Larufa engaged the lesson and verbally spoke each question as seen in
the following examples:
Question 1: (Point to the pictures.) This is a bird and a well. Which picture begins
with the same sound as bag? Press A for bird and B for well.
Question 2: (Point to the pictures.) This is a mug and a cot. Which picture ends
with the same sound as pet? Press A for mug and B for cot.
Question 3: (Point to the pictures.) This is a hat and a rug. Which picture has the
same middle sound as sun? Press A for hat and B for rug.
Since this session was for assessment purposes, and no remediation was planned
during delivery, Mrs. Larufa chose to turn off the following Delivery Options so they
would not be shown after each question: correct answer, answer distribution,
percent correct, and cumulative percent correct. Since she was verbally delivering
the question she also chose to manually start (uncheck Auto Start the Question) and
end each question so students would listen to the entire question before attempting
to answer.
CPS Scenarios 4

CPS Solution: Report
1. The rhyming test assessed the students’ capability to distinguish auditory sounds.
Mrs. Larufa simply wanted to know the overall percentage for all 20 questions so
she chose to look at the Instructor Summary Report (image 3). Her main goal in
looking at this report was to determine if she needed to continue whole class
instruction on rhyming or find out if there was only a small group of students that
still needed additional instruction.
(Image 3)
CPS Scenarios 5

2. The phoneme isolation test gave Mrs. Larufa more detailed information because she
aligned each question to one or two standards that would help her identify groups of
students in need of additional instruction. Therefore, she chose to use the Standards
Analysis with Student Cross Index Report (image 4) to look more in depth at the
data this assessment provided.
(Image 4)
Data-Driven Decisions
1. The rhyming test results displayed in the Instructor Summary Report showed Mrs.
LaRufa that the class average was 88.33%, which informed her that overall her
class was grasping the concept of rhyming fairly well. She looked through the report
to identify any students still having difficulty and decided Ryan, Nathan, Autumn,
Andrew, and Alexis would benefit from some small group and/or individual
instruction on rhyming.
2. The whole class data from the phoneme isolation test displayed in the Standards
Analysis with Student Cross Index Report revealed that the next vowel sound Mrs.
Larufa needed to instruct the class on was “long a” since only 50% of them scored
well on those questions. She used the rest of the data to create a sequence of
instruction for vowel sounds.
CPS Scenarios 6

To create small groups for instruction she used the Excel sort command to view the
individual student results for each standard. This allowed her to determine who was
performing the lowest for each individual sound as well as sound placement
(beginning, middle, end).
Thalheimer’s Questioning Strategies
• #4 Pre-questions that Activate Prior Knowledge
• #15 Don’t Show Answer Right Away
• #22 Data Slicing
• #29 Using Questions with Images
CPS Scenarios 7

Grades 3-5 Example: Standardized Tests
Scenario
Mr. Perullo, a fourth grade teacher, wants to help prepare his students for the
upcoming state standardized test in English/Language Arts (ELA). He is working with his
team of fourth grade teachers to develop ways of doing this that integrates with their
current reading instruction using literature circles (a group of students reading the
same book that meet to discuss parts of the book and complete assignments to help
them understand the book better) as opposed to repeatedly giving students practice
tests.
CPS Solution: Prepare
1. In order to give students the complete experience of taking a standardized test, the
fourth grade teachers decided they would print the sample test booklet and bubble
answer sheet for each student in the class. They had students take the test in the
same format as they would on the actual test date by using the time frame for
administration and having students transpose their responses onto the answer sheet
by filling in the bubble completely with a number two pencil.
2. One of the teachers took the scoring guide for the test and created a standards-
aligned answer key using the FastGrade feature of CPS. One of the advantages of
using the state printed materials is that the state agency that created the materials
already aligned each question to the state standards (image 5). This made it quite
easy to align the question to each standard since eInstruction already provides the
state standards for their customers to use in CPS.
CPS Scenarios 8

(Image 5)
CPS Solution: Engage
1. The day after students completed the simulated testing experience they were given
back their answer sheets so the data could be collected using CPS. They used the
Student Paced Engage Mode to allow each student to input their answers from the
test.
CPS Scenarios 9

CPS Solution: Report
1. The practice ELA test gave the fourth grade teachers detailed information because
they aligned each question to the ELA standard that it tested. Therefore, they chose
to use the Standards Analysis with Student Cross Index Report (image 6) to look
more in depth at the data this assessment provided and help them identify groups
of students in need of similar instruction.
(Image 6)
2. The teaching team was also interested in looking at patterns of incorrect answers to
help inform them about misunderstandings and misconceptions so the chose to print
the Item Analysis with Standards Report (image 7) for each class.
(Image 7)
CPS Scenarios 10

Data-Driven Decisions
1. As a professional learning community (teams of educators systematically working
together to improve teaching practice and student learning) the fourth grade team
decided to look at the entire grade levels’ results together to identify groups of
students across different classes that needed similar instruction.
Based on the individual student performance data for each standard, new literature
circle groups were established that would address the instructional needs identified
in the Standards Analysis with Student Cross Index Report through the assignments
created for each book. Teachers worked with specific literature groups during their
literacy block regardless of which class the students came from, so together as a
grade level they could meet their students’ needs.
In addition, teachers shared best practices in instruction with one another to help
create more meaningful assignments. For example, in looking at the Standards
Analysis with Student Cross Index Report it was noted that one teacher’s class
scored substantially higher than the other three on the standard “Uses graphic
organizers to record significant details about characters and events in stories.” That
teacher pulled out of her files several different graphic organizers she used with her
literature circle groups and shared her best instructional strategies with the team.
2. In addition, the teaching team looked at patterns of incorrect answers from the Item
Analysis with Standards Report and noted that questions 1, 4, 8, 14, 17, and 20
elicited a wide variety of answers. There was no identifiable pattern in the standards
that each of these questions was associated with, so the teachers spent time
evaluating the construction of the questions to try and determine why this
happened. They decided to review these questions with their entire class to have a
discussion about what prompted their answers and used the Random Student Picker
to choose students from the class to share their thinking during the discussion.
CPS Scenarios 11

Thalheimer’s Questioning Strategies
• #4 Pre-questions that Activate Prior Knowledge
• #5 Pre-questions that Surface Misconceptions
• #7 Post-questions to Provide Retrieval Practice
• #8 Post-questions to Enable Feedback
• #9 Post-questions to Surface Misconceptions
• #17 Helping Learners Transfer Knowledge to Novel Situations
• #22 Data Slicing
• #29 Using Questions with Images (depending on the test utilized)
CPS Scenarios 12

Grades 6-8 Example: Homework and Practice
Scenario
Teachers at Woodland Middle School received professional development in the nine
instructional strategies identified by Robert J. Marzano as best practices for improving
student learning. The principal administered a survey at the last faculty meeting and
the staff identified “Homework and Practice” as the strategy they wanted to most focus
on school wide. The survey data collected with CPS showed a pattern that teachers
were having difficulty returning homework to students in a timely fashion. As a result
they were moving on to new content without reviewing students’ understanding of past
material and allowing students’ needs to guide instruction.
CPS Solution: Prepare
1. Teachers were shown several strategies for using CPS to review homework at the
beginning of each class period.
a. FastGrade: For materials that were already created and stored as word
documents, printed off the Internet, or found in textbooks it was suggested
to create answer keys with the FastGrade feature of CPS.
b. ExamView Test Generator: Many of the textbooks adopted at the Middle
School included ExamView and question banks aligned to the textbook
content. Teachers learned how to access this content using ExamView Test
Generator to create homework assignments that were printed and handed
out to students and later added to the CPS Lessons list.
c. Lessons and Questions: For complex content that might require more review
it was suggested to create Lessons and Questions in CPS using the question-
authoring tool.
CPS Scenarios 13

CPS Solution: Engage
1. Teachers were shown several strategies for engaging CPS to review homework at
the beginning of each class period.
a. Student Paced Engage Mode: Students arrive to class with their completed
homework and pick up their response pad upon entering the classroom. The
Student Paced engage mode (image 8) allows them to input their answers at
their own pace utilizing those beginning few minutes of class very effectively.
The most powerful aspect for the teacher is the ability to view in real-time
how the class is performing on each individual question. Instead of reviewing
all of the questions, this gives the teacher the ability to identify the questions
that are most troublesome for students and review those prior to moving on
to new material.
Percent correct for each question
(Image 8)
CPS Scenarios 14

b. There It Is!: This is a twist on Student Paced because if you set the Delivery
Options to “Enable Student Paced Mode” students can enter class with their
completed homework and use their response pad to enter all of their answers
in a randomly generated order (image 9). At the end, points are awarded to
the students that entered the correct answer for each question and bonus
points if they were first. This might get them to class on time! (Note: Be sure
to view the score before ending the session, as the information will no longer
be available.) After ending the session the option of displaying the questions
missed is available for a whole class review (images 10 and 11).
(Image 9)
(Image 10)
(Image 11)
CPS Scenarios 15

c. Teacher Instruction Engage Mode: The teacher engages the lesson s/he
created to review the homework and the entire class answers each question
at the same time. The information provided by the answer distribution,
percent correct, and cumulative percent correct (image 12) can guide the
teacher’s response on how to best inform his/her students.
(Image 12)
CPS Scenarios 16

CPS Solution: Report
1. The following student reports are created for each individual student to give them
feedback on how they performed.
a. Study Guide: The Study Guide (image
13) lists for each student the report
type, session name, class name, class
points average, student name, pad
ID, student ID, number of correctly
answered questions, percentage of
correctly answered questions, each
question, correct answer choice and
student answer.
(Image 13)
b. Study Guide – Incorrect Answers: The Study Guide - Incorrect Answers is the
same report as the Study Guide except this report lists only questions and
answers each student answered incorrectly during the session delivery.
c. Study Guide - Class Summary: The Study Guide – Class Summary (image 14)
is a pared down version of the traditional Study Guide. It simply and concisely
lists each student, what question(s) they missed, the correct answer and their
answer. It does not show the question so students would need access to this
information elsewhere.
(Image 14)
CPS Scenarios 17

2. The Opinion Survey Report was used by the principal to tabulate the results of the
survey administered at the faculty meeting. This report shows the distribution of
opinion on a scale determined by how the user sets the questions up.
Data-Driven Decisions
1. Student Paced Engaged Mode: Teachers can use the ability to view in real-time how
the class is performing on each individual question giving them the immediate
feedback and data they need to determine which questions are most troublesome
for students and review those prior to moving on to new material.
2. There It Is!: After ending the session the option of displaying the questions missed
is available for a whole class review. In addition, the session is immediately graded
so any of the reports are available to the teacher to inform instructional decisions.
3. Teacher Instruction Engage Mode: The information provided by the answer
distribution, percent correct, and cumulative percent correct can guide the teacher’s
response on how to best inform his/her students after delivering each question.
4. Opinion Survey Report: The principal used the results of this report to come to a
consensus on what strategy the faculty wanted to most focus on school wide.
CPS Scenarios 18

Thalheimer’s Questioning Strategies
• #2 Graded Questions to Encourage Homework and Preparation
• #7 Post-questions to Provide Retrieval Practice
• #8 Post-questions to Enable Feedback
• #9 Post-questions to Surface Misconceptions
• #29 Using Questions with Images
• #30 Aggregating Handset Responses for a Group or Team
• #31 Using One Handset for a Group or Team
• #32 Using Questions in Games
CPS Scenarios 19

Grades 9-12 Example: Leadership Lesson
Scenario
Miss Smith begins the world history unit “Historical Impact of World Leaders” by having
her students pick a leader with whom they best relate and create a comparison chart of
leadership qualities between the leader and themselves. One of her goals is to get
students to identify leadership qualities they possess. Large portions of her students
have difficulty doing this because they don’t view themselves as leaders. She thought
the interactivity of CPS could be incorporated into an introductory lesson to help
students make this connection.
CPS Solution: Prepare
1. Miss Smith developed some questions using the question-authoring templates but
also knew that the lesson would incorporate verbal questions asked on the fly as the
class discussion ensued.
2. Here is a brief outline of her lesson plan:
a. Using CPS, ask the opening question: To what degree do you view yourself as
a leader? I possess strong leadership skills, I possess good leadership skills, I
have very few leadership skills, I do not have any leadership skills
b. Have students write the name of someone they view as a leader on a piece of
paper. Under that name have them list at least three qualities this person has
that makes him/her a leader.
CPS Scenarios 20

c. Arrange students in pairs for a pair-share activity. In this activity have them
compare the qualities they listed (it is optional if they want to share their
leader’s name) and eliminate any overlapping qualities from both lists to
create a combined list.
i. Optional: Have pairs get in groups of four and repeat this activity.
d. Use the Random Student Picker in CPS to call on students to share the
leadership qualities listed from their pair/group activity. As students share
their responses create a running list on the board eliminating any duplicate
qualities.
e. Using the Verbal Question mode in Large Screen Format, type the final list
into CPS to ask the class questions such as:
i. Which one of these leadership qualities do you think impacts other
people the most? Least?
ii. Rank order the importance of these qualities in a leader from most
important to least important. (numeric response)
iii. Which of these qualities do you see most in yourself? Least in
yourself?
iv. How many of these qualities do you possess? (numeric response)
f. After each question elicit discussion from the class about the responses.
CPS Scenarios 21

g. To end the lesson, return to the original question and ask it again: To what
degree do you view yourself as a leader? I possess strong leadership skills, I
possess good leadership skills, I have very few leadership skills, I do not have
any leadership skills
h. Use the Data Slicing capability of CPS to display the two questions side by
side and comment on the changes that occurred as a result of the class
discussion and activities.
CPS Scenarios 22

CPS Solution: Engage
1. The Teacher Instruction Engage Mode was utilized along with interspersed Verbal
Questions based on the class discussion. The Verbal Questions were engaged using
the Large Screen Format so Miss Smith could type in the responses of her students.
CPS Solution: Report
1. Although most of the data was utilized in real-time to drive the class discussion, Miss
Smith decided to look at the Question Report so she could view how each individual
student in her class answered each question. Because she showed the Verbal
Questions in Large Screen Format she was also able to access the questions and
answers developed by each of her classes on the fly because the Question Report
shows what was typed in during the impromptu discussion in class.
CPS Scenarios 23

2. Data Slicing is also available in the reports section so Miss Smith was able to look at
how her students responded to multiple questions by showing a cross section of
responses. She was also able to utilize the demographic data from her class lists to
see if there were any trends based on ethnicity or gender in terms of how students
viewed themselves as leaders. This data was shared in subsequent lessons, and
classes, as she deemed necessary.
Data-Driven Decisions
1. Through the Question Report, Miss Smith noted which students did not view
themselves as leaders in the first question asked in class. Although she believed the
nature of the lesson helped many of these students see leadership qualities in
themselves, she also knew that additional reinforcement would be needed to help
these students identify their leadership qualities. She was able to use this
information in future situations by allowing these students to take on various
leadership roles in her classroom so she could instill in them a feeling of self worth
and confidence.
Thalheimer’s Questioning Strategies
• #3 Avoiding the Use of One Correct Answer (When Appropriate)
• #4 Pre-questions that Activate Prior Knowledge
• #6 Pre-questions to Focus Attention
• #9 Post-questions to Surface Misconceptions
• #10 Questions Prompting Analysis of Things Presented in Classroom
• #12 Questions to Debrief an In-Class Experience
• #13 Questions to Surface Affective Responses
• #18 Making the Learning Personal
• #20 Helping Learners Question Their Assumptions
• #22 Data Slicing
• #25 Utilizing Student Questions and Comments
• #36 Open-Ended Questions
CPS Scenarios 24