Hello everyone! InQuiring minds is back giving you a snapshot of recent blog posts, articles, and interesting thought pieces that have grabbed our attention. We hope you will share with us any comments or opinions you may have. As always, let’s keep the conversation going on our Facebook page and @RightQuestion or #Teach2AskQuestions.
Thoughts on Students Asking Questions
At RQI, we are all about the importance of student questions. This week, we present to you blogs and articles that discuss that issue, so check out the links below!
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Ronald D. Vale makes the argument in “The Value of Asking Questions” that typical science education today focuses too much on the end game of “facts”; rather, he says, asking good questions “constitutes an important skill to foster for practicing scientists.”
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In “Learners Should Be Developing Their Own Essential Questions,” Jackie Gerstein does a wonderful job of curating important quotations on students asking questions. She points out that while much of education is focused on teachers coming up with essential questions, there is little emphasis on learners coming up with their own.
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In a recent blog post, Amy Reed-Sandoval writes about “Philosophy for Children Sessions” and using the Community of Inquiry and Question Formulation Technique (QFT) to facilitate students asking questions. She ends her post with six observations of her students during the process, one of which is, “Students who are usually rather quiet during Community of Inquiry took much more active roles in raising philosophical questions.”
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“Helping students learn how to learn: That’s what most educators strive for, and that’s the goal of inquiry learning,” reports Katrina Schwartz in a blog post for MindShift. Schwartz also interviews Leslie Maniotes, a teacher effectiveness coach in the Denver Public Schools and one of the authors of Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century. Her work is also worth checking out.
What have you been reading? Please share your thoughts below!