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Phase: IDEATE Missions: Celebrating and Motivating Innovation

Teach Children to Ask Their Own Questions

A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas

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Tony Wagner, 7 skills students need for their future. 1) Critical Thinking & Problem Solving - The ability to ask the right questions 2) Collaboration across networks & leading by influence 3) Agility & Adaptability 4) Initiative and entrepreneurialism 5) Effective oral & written communication 6) Accessing and analyzing information 7) Curiosity & imagination
In this video, Dan Rothstein discusses the benefits of teaching students to ask their own questions.

“The best creative solutions don’t come from finding good answers to the questions that are presented. They come from inventing new questions.” ~Seth Godin. Question the question.

The classic model of teaching is leading students by asking questions. It’s often called The Socratic Method, after the ancient Greek philosopher, but it’s a staple of the modern classrooms from elementary school up to college. The most famous Hollywood version of it may be from the film and TV show, The Paper Chase, set at Harvard Law School.

Educators Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana want to turn the standard model on its head. They’ve founded the “Right Question Institute,” based on the idea that it’s much more effective to teach students to formulate and ask their own questions. It’s critical not just for the classroom, but for students’ lives.

Additional Resources:

Live: Questions in progress!

Character Lab - Teacher Innovation Grant Winner - Curious & Curiouser! So many questions!

New Interactive Learning Technology

Discovery Education's Social Studies Techbook - How Can We Make the 63,000 Questions We Ask in a Year Better?

Books:

A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas - by Warren Berger
Beyond Rhetorical Questions: Assertive questions in everyday interaction, by Irene Koshik
Why Do You Ask?: The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse, by Alice Freed (Editor), Susan Ehrlich (Editor)

Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators –by Jeff Dyer (Author), Hal Gregersen (Author), Clayton M. Christensen

Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 10 Powerful Tools for Life and Work (Inquiry Institute Library) by Marilee Adams               

Websites/Articles:

4-24 Project - a community dedicated to rekindling the provocative power to ask the right questions in adults so they can pass this crucial skill onto the next generation.

Inquiry Institute - Great results begin with great questions

Use Catalytic Questioning to Solve Significant Problems - by Hal Gregersen July 19, 2013

Creative Questioning:The art of asking dumb questions, Leadership Development at The Banff Centre

Visible Thinking: A routine for generating and transforming questions

How to design a classroom built on inquiry openness and trust - By Shelley Wright September 8, 2015

The power of question formulation - Educational Leadership -October 2014 | Volume 72 | Number 2  Instruction That Sticks

Do You have the Personality To Be an Inquiry-Based Teacher? By MindShift November 21, 2013

What's going on in this picture? - Every Monday the New York Times publishes a single image without a caption and asks students what they think is going on in the picture. From 9am-2pm Eastern that day students who register on the site are also invited to post what they think they see, explain why and ask questions through a moderated forum. Critical thinking, communication, collaboration, it's all there.

Asking Questions more open-ended-ly and creatively

5 Ways to Help Your Students Become Better Questioners

Encouraging student questioning

How can we teach kids to question?

Videos

Randall Munroe: Comics that ask "what if?" - Randall Munroe, Cartoonist, Filmed Mar 2014

Educators Want Students To Ask The Questions 

3 Rules to spark learning - Ramsey Musallam

Ask better questions | Joe Burgum | TEDxFargo

How to ask the right Questions - Hal Gregersen - Gregersen is the creator of Forbes’ Most Innovative Companies list and founder of the 4-24 project, which is dedicated to rekindling in adults the provocative power of asking the right questions to ultimately cultivate the next generation of innovative leaders.



This inspired (1)

We know what, the big question is how
We know what, the big question is how

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Wow! What a great collection of resources, approaches and ideas. Thanks everyone.
I am wondering what routines and rituals can he teachers to shift their vision of teaching away from leading students to THE answer and toward fostering interests and passions and valuing student thinking and student generated questions. Our current routines and rituals still support teacher as the centre of knowledge-what key everyday, small changes in behavior will start to move us toward a new centre for our classrooms. I think you have hit on a huge one -ask more high level questions, a second might be to talk less-whoever is doing the talking is doing the most thinking.

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