Mackenzie
- Questions are intended to provoke thought and inspire reflection, but all too often the process is short circuited by the simple answer or the appealing placebo.
- If we hope to see inventive thought infused with critical judgement, questions and questioning must become a priority of schooling and must gain recognition as a supremely important technology
- The first step is to make research a daily event in every child’s life, not just something that happens once a year in February or March when we suddenly devote several weeks to a state project. Research is
the best practice for the kinds of questioning and reasoning describcd earlier. While there are many ways to increase the frequency of student investigations, the following three stratcgics are offered as
examples of possibilities.
A. The Year Long Project - ("Five Hundred Miles”)
All students start the year by identifying a leader-, a celebrity, a crisis, a hobby or some other aspect of life that interests them enough to devote nine months to its study. Each student then becomes an expert on her or his subject and is ultimately expected to convert the expertise into an authentic product.
B. Essential Questions in Every Unit
Each time a teacher introduces a new unit, the class is shown five or more essential questions and each student is asked to explore one of them during the unit or build one of her or his own subject to teacher
approval.
C. The Daily Research Question
Teachers greet students each day with an intriguing research question prominently displayed on the board - puzzles, riddles and curious questions that might be answered reasonably well without
months of study. These should requirc some thought and ingenuity and not be trivial pursuits. They should be highly motivating and captivating.
