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Tech tools that assist all students to be independent learners & teachers to become better teachers
Curated by Beth Dichter
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Learners Should Be Developing Their Own Essential Questions

Learners Should Be Developing Their Own Essential Questions | Eclectic Technology | Scoop.it
From usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com - March 28, 2013 11:35 PM

"Having essential questions drive curriculum and learning has become core to many educators' instructional practices.  Grant Wiggins, in his work on Understanding By Design, describes an essential quetion as:  

A meaning of “essential” involves important questions that recur throughout one’s life. Such questions are broad in scope and timeless by nature. They are perpetually arguable – What is justice?  Is art a matter of taste or principles? How far should we tamper with our own biology and chemistry?  Is science compatible with religion? Is an author’s view privileged in determining the meaning of a text? We may arrive at or be helped to grasp understandings for these questions, but we soon learn that answers to them are invariably provisional..."

Beth Dichter's insight:

Why should we teach students to develop their own essential questions? Perhaps because they may be able to develop questions that are engaging and of interest to them. 
Gerstein explores this issue by sharing a variety of resources that look at question, including Jamie McKenzie who describes "what actually happens in most schools and classrooms in terms of questioning", Paul Harris who "argues that questions occupy a more central role than we realize in childhood cognitive development", and others.

In addition there is information on how to help students generate their own essential questions (additional information in the post):

* Begin a New Unit with Students Developing Questions

* Create a Taxonomy of Questions

* Ask Students to Create Questions as Homework

She also shares information on the QFT (Question Formulation Technique) which has six steps, beginning with "Teacher Design a Question Focus" and immediately moves to "Students Produce Questions" and then to "Students Improve Question" and finishes with "Students Reflect on What they have Learned." For more information (and steps 4 and 5) check out the post!

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Patrice Bucci's curator insight, September 29, 2013 7:00 PM

So true... I cringe when I am in classrooms with the packaged program "essential question" of the week on the board...and very often those "essential questions" lack cognitive clarity for the students
Mary Reilley Clark's curator insight, January 8, 2014 1:33 PM

A great summary of why questioning still matters.  We've been talking about metacognition a lot this year in the library.  Learning how to develop questions is a large part of learning how you learn and think.
Stacey Jackowski's curator insight, February 19, 2014 8:20 PM

This quote is so true.  Learning how to ask essential questions is a skill that we can carry with us for the rest of our lives and facilitates a lifetime of learning. 
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Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions - Harvard Education Letter

Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions - Harvard Education Letter | Eclectic Technology | Scoop.it
From www.hepg.org - February 14, 2012 8:44 PM

When students know how to ask their own questions, they take greater ownership of their learning, deepen comprehension, and make new connections and discoveries on their own. However, this skill is rarely, if ever, deliberately taught to students from kindergarten through high school. Typically, questions are seen as the province of teachers, who spend years figuring out how to craft questions and fine-tune them to stimulate students’ curiosity or engage them more effectively. We have found that teaching students to ask their own questions can accomplish these same goals while teaching a critical lifelong skill. (Make sure to click where it says Read Sidebar for the Question Forumulation Technique.)

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How to Ask a Smart Question| The Committed Sardine

How to Ask a Smart Question| The Committed Sardine | Eclectic Technology | Scoop.it
From blogpost.cfm - March 27, 2012 10:07 PM

Asking questions is a great way to enhance the learning process both in school and later on in life. Unfortunately the human fallacy here is that we sometimes don't feel the need to truly think before we ask these questions, which can lead to frustration, disappointment, and resentment—everything except learning the knowledge we seek—when we don't get the answer we were expecting. There is definitely a science behind asking smart questions, and this article lays it out rather nicely.

 

PLEASE NOTE, THIS LINK IS NOT WORKING. WAS RESCOOPED ON MARCH 28TH WITH NEW LINK THAT WORKS. Or click on this link: http://faculty.gvc.edu/ssnyder/121/Goodquestions.html

 

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