Questioning

Big Six outline is available here:

=Notes on Questioning=


 * Trivial Pursuit (J. McKenzie) aka Bird Units (D. Loertscher):**

Read the introduction to //Ban those Bird Units: 15 Models for Teaching and Learning in Information-rich and Technology-rich Environment// here:

Below is from McKenzie's //Filling the Toolbox Part Two// at [|www.fno.org/toolbox2.html]:

"Much of the research done in school is topical in nature. Students are asked to 'go find out about' a certain person, place, event or topic. The main skill involved is the __gathering__ of information." Solution? "Students who have been taught to ask questions can use them to accomplish this immediate assignment and to lay the groundwork for doing research with begins with a question. The 'go find out about it' research project can begin with students asking questions. Ask them: What questions can you ask about how to do this assignment?" Note that these examples are information literacy questions. Can you identify which level of the Big 6 they represent? [The first one has been done for you]

Where do I find out about it? Big 6 level? [#3 Location & Access] Where do I start? Which references are very general to give the big ideas? Which references are too detailed for what I want to know? What resources can I use besides books? How will I know what is important about the topic? How will I know how to organize the ideas?

"A more meaningful curiosity-driven version of the research project __begins__ with student questions. Students should be able to guide research. The teacher can require types of questions which cannot be answered directly from a book. For example, if a student asks 'Which Civil War general was the best?' the gathering of information eventually leads to a student judgment based on criteria. This evalution task involves the student seeking information for the purpose of answering a question he or she posed, a very lifelike and lifelong activity..."

Below is from //Filling the Toolbox// at [|www.fno.org/toolbox.html]

McKenzie suggests an exercise to generate questions (which would also serve as a Big 6 Task Definition strategy: Brainstorming) and that the process needs to be explicitly taught. He suggests 4 rules:

All contributions are accepted without judgment The goal is a large number of ideas or questions Building on other people's ideas is encouraged Far out, unusual ideas are encouraged

Assign up to four student recorders (for younger students, use a parent volunteer). New questions can come from old ones. When things slow down, begin to categorize - ask students how they might group any of the questions. These categories can then provide the basis for organizing and structuring the research. Ask - which ideas go together? Eventually, students will use the categorizing step to generate even more questions as they realize they have left out a category or want to extend one farther. Questions & categories generated by students add intrinsic motivation to find the answers - CHOICE. Once students have categorized the questions you might ask:

Which questions seem most interesting and which seem least interesting? Which questions are the easiest to answer and which are the hardest? Why? What is it about questions that make some easy and some hard to answer?

In fact, you might ask yourselves these same questions in your reflection on your Question Sets. Also, **check the Home Page** for new quotations on questioning **and the Resource Page** for a link to a Question Brainstormer organizer

=Essential Questions=

Please define or explain your understanding of an Essential Question through the Discussion tab before proceeding.

image source: [|www.canberra.edu.au/.../686070/questions.jpg]

Here are Jamie McKenzie's **Essential Question Traits, from p. 86 of //Learning to Question, to Wonder, to Learn://**

The question probes a matter of considerable importance The question requires movement beyond understanding and studying - some kind of action or resolve - pointing toward the settlement of a challenge, the making of a choice or the forming of a decision The question cannot be answered by a quick and simple 'yes' or 'no' answer The question probably endures, shifts and evolves with time and changing conditions - offering a moving target, in some respects The question may be unanswerable in the ultimate sense The question may frustrate the research, may prove arid rather than fertile and may evade the quest for clarity and understanding

Below from the **Coalition of Essential Schools** at []

"In every class and every subject, students will learn to ask and to answer these questions:

From whose viewpoint are we seeing or reading or hearing? From what angle of perspective? How do we know when we know? What's the evidence, and how reliable is it? How are things, events, or people connected to each other? What is the cause and what is the effect? How do they fit together? What's new and what's old? Have we run across this idea before? So what? Why does it matter? What does it all mean?"