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Thursday, August 19, 2010

Combining the Q-Matrix for Student-Generated Questions and Meeting Words, Another Simple Collaborative Writing Web Tool: Part One



When mentoring our pre-service and in-service teachers we need to describe and model both research-based and clinically tested best practices, and demonstrate how these best practices can be applied in the real (i.e. physical) and virtual (online) classroom for both teaching and teacher training. Accordingly in this section of the blog we will describe how the internet can serve as a supplemental resource for instruction and the mentoring of pre-service and in-service Jewish educators. In this post we will share a two-part lesson plan idea on how the teacher/mentor can engage his or class students/mentees to brainstorm questions by using Dr. Chuck Wiederhold's Q-Matrix framework and recording those ideas on the Meeting Words platform. Here is part one.

Assumption: The teacher or mentor teacher has an interactive white board (i.e. SMART Board, Promethean, etc.), a Tablet PC (also called a Slate or Blade), a computer presenter or computer with internet access attached to an LCD projector in the classroom. It would be ideal if students or mentees had access to their own laptop computers as well.

Note: Although this lesson plan idea is designed for the Judaic Studies classroom, it can be also be used for training pre-service and in-service Jewish educators for professional or staff development. For example, the Meeting Words can be used to co-create a lesson plan, a unit, a professional development or staff development plan, or a curriculum project. It is our hope that Jewish educators around the globe will form an online community of practice, a CoP, a group of people who share an interest, a craft, and/or a profession, to enhance the delivery of instruction and training of Jewish educators.


First let’s review the Q-Matrix of Dr. Chuck Wiederhold.

Like Dr. Frank Lyman’s Think-Trix, the Q-Matrix of Dr. Chuck Wiederhold is a construct for student generated questions. At the top of this post you can find the Q-Matrix. You will note that the matrix provides a list of question starters that relate to different horizontal (i.e. event, situation, choice, person, reason, and means), and vertical (i.e. present, past, possibility, probability, prediction, and imagination) categories. Let’s explain how the matrix works. Assume that the teacher intends to conduct a classroom discussion on the state of Israel, and wants her students to select the questions for discussion. After explaining the Q-Matrix, the teacher invites the students to pose any question on the matrix. For example, a student might say, “I want to ask a Present/Event question. I want to know, what is the capital of Israel?”

For additional elaboration of the Q-Matrix see this previous post.

On the next post we will share the second part of a two-part lesson plan idea on how to help empower students to generate their own questions through using the Q-Matrix and then recording those questions on the collaborative writing web tool, Meeting Words.

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