The Facilitator's Book of Questions: Tools for Looking Together at Student and Teacher Work

This book is an essential tool for facilitators of groups using protocols, or structured conversations, to collaboratively review student and teacher work. A follow-up to Looking Together at Student Work and Assessing Student Learning, this resource considers the purposes for engaging in collaborative review and provides some of the most effective strategies for using protocols to support successful group work.

Features:

• Guidance for using protocols for collaborative assessment of student learning.
• Frameworks to support facilitators in playing their unique role within the group, including a set of “thinking dispositions” and a range of “moves” facilitators can make at different points in the conversation.
• An extended discussion of the challenges facilitators face in protocol-guided conversations, such as time constraints, large groups, and participants who are reluctant to engage in protocols.
• Activities that novice and experienced facilitators can use, individually or in groups, to apply the frameworks and resources provided in this book.

David Allen is a researcher at the National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching (NCREST), Teachers College, Columbia University. Tina Blythe is a researcher with Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and teaches in the faculty development program of the Boston Architectural Center.