It started out easy enough.
My second graders were sharing the questions they had written with one another, and to promote supportive listening I had the kids nominate strong questions for a light-hearted “awards” ceremony.
Our “Questies” consisted of 3 categories:
*Questions we’re most curious to find the answer to
*Big questions, that nobody really has the answers to
*Questions we’re jealous of because we wish we had asked them ourselves
I solicited nominations, and it went well. At least…in TWO of the three categories. See for yourself:
We knew which questions we were jealous of, or curious about, but we just couldn’t seem to nominate any big questions. Which means a few things might be happening:
*None of the kids wrote any big questions on their homework.
*The kids weren’t listening to one another as well as they could have.
*The kids don’t know what a big question is.
Situations like this always present themselves like a choose-your-own-adventure story. I’ll have to start by diagnosing the homework assignments. If there are several “big” questions on there, it looks like we’ll have to do some activities on how to be a listener.
If there aren’t any “big” questions on there, I’ll have to figure out if it’s because kids weren’t giving their full effort, because they’re not connecting deeply with the reading, or because I need to do some teaching on what big questions actually are, or how to ask them.
I do know that, as a teacher, I do this kind of problem-solving every day. Multiple times a day. Sometimes in bigger ways like this, that make me stop and think. But most of the time, I’m performing dozens of these calculations without even noticing.
And what will the answer be to THIS question? What will be the diagnosis of my “Question” question?
Only time – and a bit of investigation – will tell.
Soapbox: The Way I see Things 