Ch. 5--Stage 1: ASKING

The Asking lesson planner helps the teacher to integrate specific Asking skills into a lesson or project. It is a more detailed extension of the Asking section of the Ten-minute lesson planner discussed in the previous post. There are five components in the Asking planner: essential skills, prerequisite skills, technique skills, equipment skills, and review skills. Each skill is divided into subskills, and the teacher can pick which ones to emphasize in a particular lesson--not every lesson is going to touch on every skill! This stage of planning forces the teacher to evaluate where the students are, where they need to go, and what will be needed to get there.

The student Asking tool helps students to activate their previous knowledge on a given subject. In an organized way, they are presented with the teacher's key words about the topic, are asked to summarize what they already know, and are encouraged to list questions they can use to find more information about the subject. The advanced version of this Asking tool urges students to use higher-level skills to think about questions that are relevant to the subject today. It also pushes them to look to the future and ask imaginative "what if" type questions.

It will take some practice for teachers to become adept at planning using the Asking lesson planner. It will also take lots of guidance from the teacher for students to become comfortable with the process involved in the student Asking tool. However, both of these tools provide opportunities to move toward higher-level thinking skills. With practice, the steps will become second nature, and students will start to automatically apply the skills to many situations without the guidance of the tool.