Last week, our staff meeting was on questioning in the classroom. The leading teacher brought in some information from the Right Question Institute. They have developed a technique to get students to ask a lot of questions and evaluate them. I tried that technique with my 5th graders today, and it was a really positive experience, with some good learning.
The first step is to pick a focus question. My question was: What do you want to learn about renewable energy? They had 20 minutes (it started with 10, but I kept adding more time as they requested it) to write as many questions as they could think about. A few (recommended) rules:
- Write as many questions as you can.
- Don’t judge the questions or try to answer them.
- Change any statements into questions.
- Write every statement exactly as it is stated.
After they brainstormed their questions, we had a discussion on what open- and closed-ended questions are. They then had to classify each question they wrote as either open or closed, by putting an O or C at the end of each question.
Once they had classified each question, we talked about the advantages and disadvantages of each type of question. I got some thoughtful answers, like “open questions give you different perspectives” and “closed questions can give you quick information”. Their next challenge was to select two open and two closed questions and rewrite them as the opposite kind of question. It was fun to listen to their discussions about what wording makes a question open vs. closed.
The final step is to select the “best” questions. You can explain that however you want for the task, but I told the students to pick 3-4 of the “most important questions” they had written. Then we shared them and wrote them on big pieces of paper for our bulletin board. These questions are going to guide our research over the next couple of weeks.
We ended this activity by asking what they learned through this activity and how they could use it in the future. We came up with some good ideas. The best one: “if you ask better questions, you get better answers”. Yes, yes, you do.
Teaching With Mrs. Clark 
This is such a great activity. I like differentiating between open and closed sentences. I should try this with my ninth grade students. They can use some help in this area. Thanks for sharing all the details.
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This is such an important topic for all of us in education! Thank you for sharing this successful lesson. It is a great model to try. I have the book, Just One Change and have read some of it. Now I’m motivated to read more! Thank you for the pictures of student work – they add power!
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Thanks for sharing. This sounds like a great activity that could really lift students’ ability to ask questions and think about any topic. It was nice to see photos too!
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