Asking Questions

My Learning Liaison asked for this post, requesting that I reflect on how I ask questions. We were discussing my most recent PBL unit where I had given my students the freedom to write their own driving questions.  I gave each group a Tubric from bie.org as a place to start and told them to pick a phrase from each column. When we met for the first summit a couple days later, we discussed their driving questions. My aim at that point was to make sure that the problem they proposed to solve was something that could be accomplished in both the time frame we had and the constrictions of what was available in my classroom.

A small note about my background - my most recent college experience before entering the classroom was law school.  I've mentioned my high school experience in a previous post. Both of these events left me with perhaps an unusual set of classroom perceptions.  Briefly, in high school, I learned not by listening, but by talking about a subject.  In law school, I was subjected to the Socratic method for three years, as well as being forced to do the assignments before they were explained, which I did religiously, although mostly out of terror.  (There's nothing quite like the prospect of losing a bunch of money to motivate exemplary performance out of a student).  In law school, the professors never give out answers.  Instead, you spend an entire class period being the subject of their relentless questioning.  “What about that?”  “What if this?”

I’m not advocating subjecting children to that.  However, I think that using that method in the classroom has benefits.  Additionally, the method of reading the material first and then discussing it later has become quite the buzzed-about technique, although we call it ‘flipping the classroom.’  We could learn a lot from law schools.

The first rule about asking questions is to have a good idea of what the answer should be. That seems obvious, but the concept of questioning requires that you have an in-depth understanding of the topic. That means study.  I have explained plate boundaries or galaxy formation so many times that I could do it in my sleep. However, as human understanding of both of those topics is subject to change, I have to keep up with current advances in the fields in the curricula.   Whatever your content area is, make sure that you really know what you want the final result to look like.

How does this apply to Project Based learning or more specifically, to the place where the teacher asks question – the summits?

If I am doing a regular PBL project, I have the learning standards that apply to the project as my guide. If I thoroughly grasp those standards, then I can guide the discussion to check for understanding within the group. I don't ever give answers because I think that violates the spirit of PBL and the struggle that leads to more in-depth understanding. However, a struggle that is unproductive, meaning it isn't leading anywhere, is frustrating for the students and will lead to them shutting down.  In that case, I still don't give them answers, but I do provide more narrowly tailored materials that will allow them to uncover the answers on their own. When they come back to summit, they are usually bouncing with excitement and a sense of achievement that they were able to master the concept.

In summit, when you are using questions to guide a group to a particular answer, start with the broadest or most obvious aspect of the topic. If I want them to explain that the periodic table is organized in columns by valence electrons and in rows by electron shells, that isn't the first question I ask. Instead I'll ask, "What is the most obvious organization?" or "What is the first thing you notice?"  They can always tell me that it's in order numerically by atomic number.

After that, I continue to ask increasingly narrow questions that allow the students to focus on the answer.  Usually at some point in this process one of the group members will 'get it'. At that point, I let that child take over the questioning, although I warn them not to tell the answer but to ask questions to help the other members understand.

What about in the case where there is no particular correct answer, such as in the case where the summit was a discussion of the driving question?

Again, the key is to know your topic, in this case the topic is 'What is a good driving question?'

Knowing the answer to that is partially the result of practice with writing your own questions for previous projects.  But a few things to keep in mind are that a driving question should be specific, it should apply to the real world in some way, and while it might not be 'solvable' it should be investigable.

In summit, when one group had a question 'How can we prevent drought in West Texas?' the problem was neither solvable nor investigable.   I asked them 'what are the causes of drought?' which they couldn't tell me.  I set them the task to research the causes of drought. When they came for the next summit, they had changed their question to 'How can we make the effect of the drought less?'  This version of the question was something that they might be able to answer.

Another group proposed this question: How can we educate the people of Texas about water conservation?  In this case my question was ‘how? ‘ And I kept after them with 'but how?' until they narrowed their driving question to: How can we educate the population of GMS about water conservation?

Awesome! It was narrow enough to be answered in the time frame we had and with the resources we had available.  And because their question was so well-framed, their finished product was one of the best that I saw for this project.

The temptation is always there to provide the answer, either in the interest in saving time or in saving frustration, but it has to be resisted.   In regards to the frustration issue, as I mentioned above, always have a fall back plan, a different way for the students to find the answer.   If you give them the answer, they won't develop the critical thinking skills that are the heart of not only PBL, but also Lead 2021 and the Common Core.

Time pressure is the enemy of PBL.  While we're all subject to the pressures of 'getting through the material', try not to be affected by the urge to hurry through PBL.  I'm guilty of this too; sometimes that ticking clock of looming testing is too much to ignore.  When it is clear from the discussion that the group does not understand the concept, the key in summit is not to give answers. If they haven't done the work, send them away to try again. If they have done the work, give them an alternative.

At this point, I would normally write a concluding paragraph summarizing what I've presented.  However, in the spirit of uncovering the answers on your own, I'll leave open the question of 'How do you ask good questions?'