ASCD presentation, March 2015 - based on my book Ask, Don't Tell.

1. Powerful Questions for Learning and
Innovation
Polly Patrick
Angela Peery
March 23, 2015

2. MEET – GREET – ENGAGE
1. What is your name?
2. What is your current position?
3. Complete the following statement:
“This seminar will be a success
if…”

3. Learning Intentions
1. Explore the power of effective
questions.
2. Investigate listening to the answer as
even more critical than asking the
question.
3. Connect questioning with innovation.

5. What questions would you ask?
1. What is an example of
how you would use each?
2. Be ready to share your
examples.
brief, clear reflective
empowering
divergent

6. Section 2
Engage
Clarify Thinking
Deepen Understanding

7. Find the
five-
pointed
star.

8. Bottom-up
processing
Top-down
processing
What just happened?

9. How do I feel?
Am I interested?
Is this important?
Key Questions
Can I do this?
Marzano, Pickering, and Heflebower, The Highly Engaged Classroom

10. We must capture each student’s mental
attention, form questions, facilitate
discussion, and provide feedback to students
between questions in order to keep the
learning going forward… Ask, Don’t Tell, p. 23

11. Section 3
Engage
Clarify Thinking
Deepen Understanding

12. How do questions bring clarity?

16. What questions would you ask?

17. …Clarity comes more readily when we structure
questions so that students can
• “hear” their own thinking,
• take it apart, and
• then put it back together,
• incorporating new learning.
Ask, Don’t Tell, p. 25

18. Section 4
Engage
Clarify Thinking
Deepen Understanding

19. “Homework in primary school has an effect
of around zero. In high school it’s larger. (…)
Which is why we need to get it right. Not
why we need to get rid of it. It’s one
of those lower hanging fruit that we should
be looking in our primary schools to say,
“Is it really making a difference?” If you try
and get rid of homework in primary
schools many parents judge the quality of
the school by the presence of homework.
So, don’t get rid of it. Treat the zero as
saying, “It’s probably not making much of a
difference but let’s improve it”. Certainly I
think we get over obsessed with
homework. Five to ten minutes has the
same effect of one hour to two hours. The
worst thing you can do with homework is
give kids projects. The best thing you can
do is to reinforce something you’ve already
learnt.”
*Do you agree/disagree with the
author, speaker, etc.?
*What inferences, interpretations,
and/or connections can you make?
*Do you approve or disapprove of
this (past or present) policy, person,
or movement? *What lessons can
we learn?
*What problem(s) does the study of
this topic, person, or policy help or
solve?
*What can we infer about this
author, speaker, time, place, or
culture?
Mike Schmoker, 2006, as quoted in
Ask, Don’t Tell, p. 124

20. Section 5
Listening—A Questioner’s Partner for Power

21. Components of Communication
practice
Intended message
Perceived message
Feedback

22. Connection: Listening Strategies
Jim Knight, 2007
Inner silence
What contradicts our
assumptions
Communicate
our
understanding
Practice
everyday
clarifying
Practice with
terrible
listeners

24. Section 6
Apply
questioning meets innovation

25. Innovative thinking happens differently for different
people….
If you’re the type of thinker who likes to take mental leaps and
consider yourself a global thinker, a great idea might come to you as
you take a shower or make a meal.
If you’re the type who likes to think through things sequentially and
consider yourself more of a part-to-whole thinker, a great idea might
come to you after you have a lot of information or data.

26. What type of innovator
are you?
Ask yourself…
Analytical How could I design a system
for this? (for ex., Facebook)
Structural How could I organize this?
(for ex., Ford Motors)
Social How can I affect people? (for
ex., Panera Bread Co.)
Conceptual How can I make this
beautiful? (for ex., Steve Jobs
and Apple)

27. Another way to
innovate…
• Apply a template
• Think solution-to-problem,
not vice versa

28. Templates
• Addition
• Assigning an additional task to an existing component -
giving it a new job in addition to its existing job
• Subtraction
• Removing an essential component and keeping only
what is left
• Multiplication
• Making a copy of a component but changing it in some
way
• Division
• Dividing a component out of the product and putting it
back somewhere else, or taking the component and
physically dividing it

29. Applying Templates
• Addition – cell phones that function as cameras,
gloves that work to text and type
• Subtraction – TV series that removed the networks
and the timed episodes (like on Netflix)
• Multiplication – table tennis “paddles” that you
wear on your hands (the paddle part has been split
apart into two surfaces, and the paddle becomes
an extension of your arm)
• Division – watches that allow you to change bezels,
straps, etc.

30. What did you learn?
Where do you
go from
here?
“This seminar will be a success if . . .”