Posing questions sounds so simple but for me it was a major challenge. I am a Mathematics teacher so for over 25 years I had been the main, if not sole, source of posing questions in my classrooms. The thing with that is often I was not posing the questions the students wanted to investigate. Their buy in was low, so although the tasks looked amazing to me it was a struggle to get them to dive deep and engage in ways that would foster their critical and creative thinking.
I think this is where the power of having students pose their own questions lies. It encourages them to be curious, to look around them and wonder and to find what engages them about a situation. These are not robotic skills and as such are the essential dispositions we would like to equip our young people with for their future. It also means they have had a voice in their education, it is their question they are investigating, they will want answers.
So how do you go about encouraging students to ask questions? How do you facilitate this in a way that is meaningful and aligns their questions to your curriculum? About three years ago I started this full of enthusiasm. I had started to engage with problem based learning and had uncovered some exciting resources and found some other teachers who were already doing this and were sharing their ideas and experiences. I started with my Year 8 class at the time and excitedly showed them a video as a prompt to the lesson. I awaited eagerly to hear their questions. Why is the guy wearing a suit? Why did they make this video? These were not the questions I had in mind about speed, distance, when two runners will meet and how can we find out. I realised I had work to do. I persevered, I tried a few things. I adopted the thinking routine of I Notice, I wonder. I still had lots of silence in my classes when I asked them to share what they noticed. I then started to have them talk to their friend first, asking them what they noticed. This turned out to be a great ice breaker. It meant they could test their responses in a low threat environment before putting their ideas on public display in front of the whole class. I suddenly had more students contributing what they noticed and what they wondered. I also took every response. None was too trivial, I did not judge how good or bad the notice or wonder was, I just wrote them all down. Some students tried some silly responses, I just wrote them down. At the end we had a long list, much longer than ever before and then we unpacked the list. The next step was to deal with the trivial, the wonders that could be answered quickly until all we were left with was the deeper questions, the ones we could investigate with my subject area and invariably, the area I wanted to focus on was there amongst them.
How do you prompt students to pose questions in your class? Questions that are worth exploring further, that encourage depth in student learning? I would love to hear your techniques, what works in the classroom?
Maybe this is an area you would like to develop in you exploration of Critical Thinking. If you are just starting off down this path and try something new share with a colleague how it worked. Invite them in to observe. What worked well? What can you do to improve it for next time? If like me it fails the first time, being met with silence or superficial responses, don’t be discouraged. Reflect and refine and continue to share the journey.
Critical Thinking 