When students know how to ask their own questions, they take greater ownership of their learning, deepen comprehension, and make new connections and discoveries on their own. However, this skill is rarely, if ever, deliberately taught to students from kindergarten through high school. Typically, questions are seen as the province of teachers, who spend years figuring out how to craft questions and fine-tune them to stimulate students’ curiosity or engage them more effectively. We have found that teaching students to ask their own questions can accomplish these same goals while teaching a critical lifelong skill.
When teachers deploy the QFT [Question Formulation Technique developed at at the Right Question Institute] in their classes, they notice three important changes in classroom culture and practices. Teachers tell us that using the QFT consistently increases participation in group and peer learning processes, improves classroom management, and enhances their efforts to address inequities in education. As teachers see this happen again and again, they realize that their traditional practice of welcoming questions is not the same as deliberately teaching the skill of question formulation.
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Harvard Education Letter: Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions By DAN ROTHSTEIN and LUZ SANTANA
The Question Formulation Technique (QFT) has six key steps:
Step 1: Teachers Design a Question Focus.
Step 2: Students Produce Questions.
Step 3: Students Improve Their Questions.
Step 4: Students Prioritize Their Questions.
Step 5: Students and Teachers Decide on Next Steps.
Step 6: Students Reflect on What They Have Learned.
