This document provides an overview of teaching techniques for immediate impact, focusing on the Common Core shifts in English Language Arts and math. It discusses asking text-dependent questions to facilitate evidence-based conversations and keeping students focused on the text. For math, it emphasizes developing a deep understanding of concepts. The document also provides examples of creating text-dependent questions, engaging students in discussions, and questioning techniques to involve all learners.

1. Teaching Techniques for
Immediate Impact
10 April 2013
Susan Abelein, Ph.D.
Senior Consultant

2. Common Core Math
Shift 1: Focus
• Spend more time thinking and working on fewer concepts.
• Being able to understand concepts as well as processes
(algorithms).
Shift 4: Deep Understanding
• Show, through numerous ways, mastery of material at a
deep level
• Use mathematical practices to demonstrate understanding
of different material and concepts
Shift 5: Application
• Apply math in other content areas and situations, as
relevant
• Choose the right math concept to solve a problem when
not necessarily prompted to do so
Source: www.engageny.org

3. Common Core ELA
Shift 2: Knowledge in the Disciplines (6-12)
• Infer, like a detective, where the evidence is in a text to support an
argument or opinion
• See the text itself as a source of evidence (what did it say vs. what
did it not say?)
Shift 3: Staircase of Complexity
• Read to see what more they can find and learn as they re-read
texts again and again
Shift 4: Text Based Answers
• Go back to text to find evidence to support their argument in
a thoughtful, careful, precise way
• Create own judgments and become scholars, rather than
witnesses of the text
• Conducting reading as a close reading of the text and engaging
with the author and what the author is trying to say
Source: www.engageny.org

4. Shift 4: Teacher’s Perspective
ELA
Shift 4: Text Based Answers
• Facilitate evidence based conversations with
students, dependent on the text
• Have discipline about asking students where in
the text to find evidence, where they saw
certain details, where the author communicated
something, why the author may believe
something; show all this in words from the text.
• Plan and conduct rich conversations about the
stuff that the writer is writing about.
• Keep students in the text
• Identify questions that are text-dependent,
worth asking/exploring, deliver richly,
• Provide students the opportunity to read the
text, encounter references to another text,
another event and to dig in more deeply into
the text to try and figure out what is going on.
Math
Shift 4: Deep Understanding
• Ask yourself what mastery/proficiency really
looks like and means
• Plan for progressions of levels of
understanding
• Spend the time to gain the depth of the
understanding
• Become flexible and comfortable in own
depth of content knowledge
4
Source: www.engageny.org

5. Asking the right questions begins with choosing the right texts
Sample Readings from CCSS Appendix B
– Green Eggs and Ham
– The Story of Ruby Bridges
– Charlotte’s Web
– Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
– To Kill a Mockingbird
– The Diary of Anne Frank
– “Oh Captain, My Captain”
– “The Road Not Taken”
– The Odyssey
– Gettysburg Address
– Letter from a Birmingham Jail
– Fahrenheit 451
– The Great Gatsby
5
Source: www.corestandards.org

6. Are you afraid of spiders?
What are spider webs made of?
Have you ever visited a farm?
What sound does a pig make?
Have you ever touched a pig?
Do you like bacon?
Students would NOT have to
read Charlotte’s Web in order to
answer these questions.
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7. Word of the Day…
Power Point Pictionary

8. In

9. Intent

10. Intention

11. Intentional

12. INTENTIONAL
Antonyms:
 Non-deliberate
 Non-purposeful
 Unintentional
Synonyms:
 Deliberate
 Purposeful
 Willful
Definition:
 done by intention or design
 having external reference
Draw It:
My Sentence: As a teacher of CC ELA and/or Math, I will intentionally
plan classroom question and answer sessions by thoughtfully designing
series’ of questions which are progressively more difficult, consider
follow-up questions for wrong answers, require students to go to text(s),
and engage all students.
Other forms of the word:
 Intent
 Intention

13. Grouping & Engagement
Desks Arranged in Pods of 4
Pairs of Students:
Think-Pair-Share
Groups of Students:
Cooperative Learning
Collaborative Problem Solving
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Teacher Facilitation while Circulating
Constantly manipulate Red, Yellow, and Green
zones by walking around the classroom
Source: Fred Jones, Tools for Teaching. Santa Cruz,
CA: Frederic H. Jones & Associates. (2007).

14. Creating Text-Dependent Questions
Good text dependent questions will often linger over specific phrases and sentences to ensure careful
comprehension of the text—they help students see something worthwhile that they would not have
seen on a more cursory reading. Typical text dependent questions ask students to perform one or
more of the following tasks:
• Analyze paragraphs on a sentence by sentence basis and sentences on a word by word basis to
determine the role played by individual paragraphs, sentences, phrases, or words
• Investigate how meaning can be altered by changing key words and why an author may have
chosen one word over another
• Probe each argument in persuasive text, each idea in informational text, each key detail in literary
text, and observe how these build to a whole
• Examine how shifts in the direction of an argument or explanation are achieved and the impact of
those shifts
• Question why authors choose to begin and end when they do
• Note and assess patterns of writing and what they achieve
• Consider what the text leaves uncertain or unstated
Source: http://www.achievethecore.org/steal-these-tools/text-dependent-questions
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15. Creating Text-Dependent Questions
Step One: Identify the Core Understandings and Key Ideas of the Text
• As in any good reverse engineering or “backwards design” process, teachers should start by identifying the key
insights they want students to understand from the text—keeping one eye on the major points being made is
crucial for fashioning an overarching set of successful questions and critical for creating an appropriate
culminating assignment.
Step Two: Start Small to Build Confidence
• The opening questions should be ones that help orientate students to the text and be sufficiently specific enough
for them to answer so that they gain confidence to tackle more difficult questions later on.
Step Three: Target Vocabulary and Text Structure
Step Four: Tackle Tough Sections Head-on
Step Five: Create Coherent Sequences of Text Dependent Questions
• The sequence of questions should not be random but should build toward more coherent understanding and
analysis to ensure that students learn to stay focused on the text to bring them to a gradual understanding of its
meaning.
Step Six: Identify the Standards That Are Being Addressed
Step Seven: Create the Culminating Assessment
Source: http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/reading_lit.html
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16. Bloom: 1.0 and 2.0
16
1956, Bloom 2001, Anderson and Krathwohl

17. Charlotte’s Web (and ANY literary fiction)
Source: Buehl, D. (2009). Classroom strategies for interactive learning. (3rd ed.) Newark DE: International
Reading Association. See pages 157-161.
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Level of Thinking Questions
Remembering Who are the characters? Where does the story take place? What are the major
events of the story? What is the sequence of these events?
Understanding How does the author have the characters interact with one another? How to the
characters feelings and interactions change?
Applying What point might the author be making about the characters’ actions? Compare
and contrast plot, setting, character, and theme to my life and experiences?
Analyzing What literary devices does the author use? What seems to be the purpose for
using these literary devices?
Evaluating What does the author’s choice of words indicate about what the author might be
thinking? What emotions is the author eliciting?
Creating What theme or idea might the author be exploring in this story?

18. Student Conversation and Writing
Source: Buehl, D. (2009). Classroom strategies for interactive learning. (3rd ed.) Newark DE: International
Reading Association. See pages 190-191.
18
Fiction/Literary Text
• I made a connection to…
• I know the feeling…
• I don’t really understand…
• I can’t believe…
• I wonder why…
• I noticed…
• I was surprised…
• I think…
• If I were…
• I’m not sure…
Non-Fiction/Informational Text
(including word problems in mathematics!)
I learned…
I was surprise to learn…
I already knew that…
I was wrong to think…
I wonder why…
I still don’t know…
I found it interesting that…
I thought it was especially important…
I found it confusing when…

19. “…the most effective teachers…script their
questions in advance.” Doug Lemov, 2010 (12)
Regarding an effective teacher witnessed by
Lemov, he writes “…she has planned her exact
questions, she anticipates the wrong answers
she’s likely to get and the follow-up questions
she’ll ask if students give them.” 2010 (12)
Engaging Students in Rich & Rigorous Conversations

20. Creating a Culture for Engaging ALL Students
27 – Vegas
Are your students motivated?
46 – Joy Factor
Do you celebrate the joy of
learning? Both “correctness” and
failures!
Source: Lemov, D. (2010) Teach like a champion : 49 techniques that put students on a path to college. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Source: Lemov, D. (2012). Teach like a champion field guide: A practical resource to make the 49 techniques
your own. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

21. Techniques for Engaging ALL Students
1 - No Opt Out
Do you have students who avoid getting called on, or when they are called on, make excuses not to
answer the question; for example: “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand” or “Huh?”
2 – Right is Right
Do you find yourself affirming students’ answers by repeating their answer and then adding some
detail to complete their answer?
3 – Stretch It
Once a student gives you a correct answer, do you find yourself moving onto the next item in your
lesson plan?
4 – Format Matters
In class discussions, do you accept slang or poor grammar from students answering questions?
Source: Lemov, D. (2010) Teach like a champion : 49 techniques that put students on a path to college. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Source: Lemov, D. (2012). Teach like a champion field guide: A practical resource to make the 49 techniques
your own. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

22. Techniques for Questioning ALL Students
22 – Cold Call
Do you only call on students with their hands raised? If you call
on students who don’t raise their hands, are you systematic,
upbeat, and positive in your questioning? And, do you scaffold
the questions, moving from simple to complex or unbundle
questions such that larger questions are broken into smaller
parts?
24 - Pepper
Do you question every student in every class?
25 – Wait Time
Do you give students time to think… time to ponder… time to
locate the answer in the text?
Source: Lemov, D. (2010) Teach like a champion : 49 techniques that put students on a path to college. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Source: Lemov, D. (2012). Teach like a champion field guide: A practical resource to make the 49 techniques
your own. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

23. Resources
Websites
• www.achievethecore.org/steal-these-tools/text-dependent-questions
• www.corestandards.org
• www.engageny.org
• web.cn.edu/kwheeler/reading_lit.html
Books
• Buehl, D. (2009). Classroom strategies for interactive learning. (3rd ed.) Newark DE: International
Reading Association.
• Jones, F. (2007). Tools for teaching. Santa Cruz, CA: Frederic H. Jones & Associates.
• Lemov, D. (2010) Teach like a champion : 49 techniques that put students on a path to college. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass
• Lemov, D. (2012). Teach like a champion field guide: A practical resource to make the 49 techniques
your own. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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24. Thank you
Dr. Susan Abelein
Email: susan.abelein@catapultlearning.com
Twitter: @DrAbelein