For some time now, we have experienced the power in asking a class “where” a student likes to do a card activity, as per Angela’s comment yesterday on how her class started with “Alex likes clarinets” and, through Circling/PQA, ended up with Alex playing the clarinet at Bikini Bottom.
But then Angela found out a bit later that Alex plays the clarinet at Bikini Bottom with Sponge Bob. This is huge. It brings in a lot more ownership by the students, not to mention strength of image. Thus, we find another PQA “power word” – the word “with”, as in “Class, with whom does Alex play the clarinet?” Why, with Sponge Bob, of course!
This shows the power of “with whom” as a question to go along with “where” – both can be termed genuine PQA “power words”. We will have to add “with” to the One Word Image prompt list as well. “With” is a simple word for them to learn anyway. Now we have a way to beef up our beginning of the year PQA even more!
The only caution is that if you extend that PQA into a little scene, then you may want to avoid presenting – at this time in first year classes anyway – the 3rd person plural sounds then required in the PQA when there are multiple protagonists. No biggie though because of the net hypothesis, but I like things clear as a bell in these first two months.
The Problem with CI
Jeffrey Sachs was asked what the difference between people in Norway and in the U.S. was. He responded that people in Norway are happy and
1 thought on “PQA Power Words”
Today I met students for the first time this year. Some of my returning students were certain that they didn’t remember anything from last year, but they really did, and it showed. In my 3/4/AP class we had a wonderful moment of laughter supplied by one student’s sly humor about what kind of camp you might go to during the summer. The challenge will be to keep the class comprehensible for level 3 – my 4/AP students are very fast processors.
My beginning class was lots of fun. We did cards rather than questionnaires, and the class discovered that while Avery plays football on the field with Pacifica students, Anthony plays football in Aquarium of the Pacific with the penguins. They are both running backs, so I needed a differentiation, and Anthony was more into playing the game. (Aquarium of the Pacific was his answer to “where?”)