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Showing posts from December, 2011

How to promote questioning skills in elementary students

I think the approach has to be deliberate. Teachers need to spend considerable time encouraging students to ask questions. They need to design different activities that can promote questioning skills. This week I tried a simple approach. I put a very boring, mundane word at the center of the whiteboard: Scissors The students had to generate as many questions as they could. The quiet ones were suddenly quite vocal. I made it clear that every question was acceptable. The students came up with questions such as: What can cut a pair of scissors? What would life be like without scissors? Who decided to call a scissors a scissors?! When was the first pair of scissors invented? Can a scissors dance? (hmm)...The students  decided this was a Perspective question. ...etc I then decided to use the PYP concepts of Form, Function, Change, Connections, Perspective, Causation and Responsibility to generate more questions. We had no questions that came under Responsibility. So the concepts gu