First Ask, Then Listen: How to Get Your Students to Help You Teach Them Better, A Teachers Guide

By What Kids Can Do
June 16, 2015

This short guide, compiled by What Kids Can Do researchers, features advice on how teachers can listen to students to enhance their teaching. It includes tips on structuring conversations with students, as well as the question prompts and exercises (usually questionnaires), used to gather research for the popular book Fires in the Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from High School Students (New Press, 2003). The questions are organized into four categories: personal connections to the teacher, expectations and motivation, learning inside the classroom and out, and classroom climate and management. They could be used for small group conversations or written journal prompts.

Check out Building Support for Student-Centered Learning: A Toolkit, for more communication tools to support student-centered approaches to learning and more resources on student voice.

Source Organization: What Kids Can Do (WKCD)

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