Alyssa Park, a 4th grade teacher in Gardnerville, NV, conducts a multi-day mini unit on map-making, using an 1800s map of Nevada and the QFT to help students practice skills of observation, questioning, inference, and independent research.
Teaching + Learning
Step-by-step videos for facilitation
Watch a demonstration of a search for a primary source QFocus from the Library of Congress, starting with Google. Learn how to do a Google search limited to the Library of Congress website and how to dig into the collections once you get there.
Primary sources are powerful tools to use in learning, but they can pose a challenge for students. What happens when we teach students how to ask their own questions about primary sources? Hear from students and teachers who are using resources from the Library of Congress in combination with the QFT to spark more joy, curiosity, and a deeper engagement with primary source learning.
Using students’ questions in the next steps of learning is an important piece of making them feel that their questions are valued. In this video, teachers share ways to integrate student’s primary source questions into the next instructional steps and harness students’ curiosity to drive those next steps.
High school social studies teacher Johnny Walker facilitates a small-group virtual QFT and primary source discussion with 10th graders in Los Angeles, CA.
Lucy Canotas, a fourth-grade teacher in Manchester, New Hampshire, used the QFT to learn more about what her students knew or did not know about fractions. This video shows Canotas using a visual Question Focus to stimulate students’ questions. She leads her class through each step of the Question Formulation Technique, all the way through their reflections at the end on what they learned and liked about the process.