Questions happen all day everyday. Many of the items we use in our daily lives are the results of someone’s question. Which leads to my first question of this post, did you ask a good question today? In my opinion as a teacher I have heard over and over again there is no such thing as a bad question. In Berger’s A More Beautiful Question this point could not be made more clear. In early developmental years a child will ask around 40,000 questions (Berger, 2016, p. 85). That number drops drastically as a child enters preschool. Some factors that attribute to this rapid decline are self awareness, teachers limited time to foster questions, and the parents involvement in asking questions. One point that stuck out to me more was, giving students questions my time. So often with testing and demanding curriculum time for innovative questions is not always allotted.
Time for questions to be asked in class is something I can control, as well as giving students the tools to ask “beautiful” questions. In engaging in my CEP 812 class last week, I began asking my students a morning question. The first question I asked was, “Is there such thing as a bad question?” Out of my 23 students only 1 student said no, the rest of my students believed, that there were such thing as a bad question. Which had me thinking about the volume of questions they may not have ask in the past, because they thought it was a bad question. Deborah Meier poses an interesting question which Berger cites, “what would it look and sound like in the average classroom if we wanted to make “being wrong” less threatening (Berger, 2016, p. 106)?”
Van Phillips experimenting ended in failure more than once, as his prototypes for his prosthetics failed he dissected that failure with questioning, asking what can I do differently? To get my students thinking like that I think there are two changes that I need to implement into my classroom. One change I need to make, is adjusting my questions so that students are thinking about how to get the answer. Another change I need to make is, I need to teach my students how to formulate questions.
The first change of adjusting my questions comes after watching Dan Meyers Ted Talk where he demonstrates formulating questions that bring inquiry (this is a short video and I highly recommend watching it so I posted it below). My math story problems for example are black and white printed and really do not engage students into solving the question that is posed. However If I take the same problem adjust it to make it hands on and engaging, I am now putting students in the position to ask questions and find a deeper understanding of the answer. This adjustment in how I ask questions will also be a good example of what types of questions my students should be asking.
Teaching question formulation is something I am very excited about. So often when I ask do you have any questions, a student raises their hand and then proceeds to tell a story. I know that because of the connection the student must have an understanding of the topic, but does not understand how to formulate a question. The Right Question Institute will be such a helpful resource for me as I teach my students how to formulate questions. One item that has stuck out to me already when reading from RQI’s rules for producing questions, was the rule that a question is wrote exactly how it is stated. This may be very hard for me to do, but it goes along with Meier’s views about allowing failure to foster success. They need to know what a question isn’t, in order to understand what a question is. By giving my students time to formulate questions, rather than answer my questions, they will engage in learning in a way that creates discovery and discussion.
By making these few adjustments in the way we look at questions in our class, I hope that each student can leave school having asked a beautiful question that day.
References
Berger, W. (2016). A more beautiful question: The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. Bloomsbury.
Educator Resource Area. (2018). Retrieved from http://rightquestion.org/educators/resources/
Meyer, D. (2013, August 01). Math class needs a makeover – Dan Meyer. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qocAoN4jNwc
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