Facilitate Student Curiosity and Engagement
The skill of question asking is far too rarely deliberately taught in school. We have worked with and learned from educators to develop a teaching strategy, the Question Formulation Technique (QFT), which provides a simple yet powerful way to teach students how to formulate, work with, and use their own questions.
Access free, easy-to-use resources
Steps of the QFT & Video Guide
The QFT on One Slide
Experiencing the QFT
Introducing the QFT into Your Classroom Practice
The Question Formulation Technique in Action
My QFT Journey: Putting Students’ Minds into Motion with their Questions
Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions: One Small Change Can Yield Big Results
“How does the sun’s power get into you?” Using the QFT to Explore Energy with First Graders
How Questioning Can Drive Arguments, Productive Debate & Information Literacy Among Students
What is the QFT?
A principal point of big questions is to inspire learners to ask them as well as pursue them. Make Just One Change by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana puts this agenda front and center. Their subtitle telegraphs the ‘one change’: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions.
A student who hadn’t said a word all summer led his group in identifying open and closed questions.
The questions I had almost forced me to try and answer them, which better helped my understanding. I knew what I needed to look for.
I really enjoyed the QFT lesson. I felt empowered because I was the one coming up with the questions, not just the teacher. My favorite part of the lesson was the “no judgment zone.” It made me feel more relaxed and more open to ask and answer questions. In the future, I hope that we do more of these lessons.
Just the act of brainstorming questions led to more questions. It really helped me understand not only what I didn’t know about the subject, but also what I wanted to know.
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