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My son, now a teenager, asks quite a few questions. About a week ago, I was helping him study for a biology test; the test was over the cell cycle. As an English Language Arts teacher, I don't know much about cells other than they can be found in all living things. One of his questions was, "Is our body always going through the cell cycle?". I didn't know and was too tired to help him research the answer to that valid question. My answer was, "You need to ask your teacher." Last night I asked him if he'd ever asked his teacher about the cell cycle; he said no, because he didn't think of it anymore. The question should have been answered the night that it was asked~but the time was gone and neither one of us will bother to ask or attempt to answer it again. The teacher will move on to some other important learning and the cell cycle will become one of those topics that will not come up again...except on the end-of-course exam. 

No matter how attentive to my son's and my student's learning, I usually don't offer the time in class to truly explore those questions that come up in class. I've got to move on to other topics, skills, and strategies that need to taught (a.k.a. covered before the next benchmark exam). 

The classroom needs to be the place for inquiry~the place where kids (and teachers) can ask the questions and take the time to discuss them. We need to celebrate those questions. We need to establish a classroom that nurtures that sense of wonder and promotes active questioning instead of just teaching and learning to answer items on a test.

In Nonfiction Matters: Reading, Writing, and Research in Grades 3-8 by Stephanie Harvey, Harvey suggests the following activities to encourage active questioning in the classroom:

  • Hold classroom discussions~build time in your lesson for discussions about real ways that students can use the learning in their everyday lives.
  • Read aloud interesting nonfiction and verbalize your own questions about the topic.
  • Code text either with sticky notes or marking on a copy of the text the questions that arise as the student reads the text.
  • Identify those burning questions (like the one my son asked about the cell cycle) and put them out there for the entire faculty, staff, and student body to provide information on.
  • Play question game for a few minutes each day~students can ask any questions that are related to the reading or learning and then the students take a few minutes to discuss before closing the class for the day.
  • Institute a "question of the day"~challenge students to come with a sincere question about a learning unit or a subject under study.
  • Chart students' questions on a question web~ write the question in the center of the web and have students research the question and write information on the arms that extend from the circled question.
  • Submit students' questions to local newspapers~they just might get published.
  • Read "question" books like How Come? (Wollard 1993) or Who Put the Butter in Butterfly? (Feldman 1989).
If we are to create thinkers in America, teachers (and parents) must give children the opportunity to ask meaningful questions and allow the time for those questions to be answered. If the time is given for questioning, the student will have the answer when it is needed for that test. If my son and I had researched his question about the cell cycle, he would have been more interested in the subject and in turn understood the questions on the test.




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