Unleashing Curiosity with Quality Questioning
Unleashing Curiosity with Quality Questioning
Questioning is about more than getting an answer. It’s a dynamic strategy to achieve new understanding, enhance student curiosity and motivation, and advance learning by fostering students’ abilities to ask—and pursue answers to—their own questions.
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A question can be more than a means to elicit information. When students answer questions, they begin to understand new information, construct ideas, apply knowledge, and demonstrate understanding. When they ask questions, they begin to form mental models; explore connections among ideas; consider di erent perspectives; elaborate, enrich, and broaden their understanding; and transfer and generalize their knowledge to new situations. This 8-page quick reference guide provides reseaerch-based insights and strategies for helping teachers craft questions that offer appropriate cognitive challenge, spark curiosity, match stages of learning, and support a community of student learners.
Our Unleashing Curiosity guides are part of McREL’s Curiosity Works® resources. Based in part on a successful system-wide effort in Melbourne, Australia that improved student achievement by unleashing student curiosity, these resources give teachers and school leaders tips, suggestions, and ideas to encourage professional dialogue with other teachers and increase student curiosity. Combining these insights with McREL’s analysis of best education practices from around the world, our Curiosity Works resources support a better way of transforming schools—not through top-down pressure, but through helping teachers and school leaders work together to develop shared professional expertise and leverage the power of motivation and curiosity.