Teaching Students to Ask Good Questions

 I just watched an amazing, FREE webinar called Make It Virtual; Take It Anywhere: Adapting the QFT to New Environments. 

I had forgotten how powerful QFT (short for Question Formulation Technique) is. 

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, here's a quick summary of the process (taken from Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions): 

Step 1: Teachers design a Question Focus (provide something for students to ask questions about.)

Step 2: Students produce questions according to these four rules:

• ask as many questions as you can;
• do not stop to discuss, judge, or answer any of the questions;
• write down every question exactly as it was stated;
• and change any statements into questions.

Step 3: Students improve their questions.

Step 4: Students prioritize their questions. (The teacher, with the lesson plan in mind, offers criteria or guidelines for the selection of priority questions.)

Step 5: Students and teachers decide on next steps.

Step 6: Students reflect on what they have learned. 

Sounds simple, right? That's because it is--but it is also very powerful. Students aren't typically taught how to ask questions, and many adults aren't very good at it either. And that's a problem--for democracy and for dealing with doctors or schools or really anyone in authority whose decision directly impacts one's life. 

Using QFT will make your students more engaged learners, which is enough for me. The Right Question Institute has even bigger goals, though. It "aims to make democracy work better by teaching a strategy that allows anyone, no matter their educational, income, or literacy level, to learn to ask better questions and participate more effectively in decisions that affect them."

This webinar was great because

• It gave a quick intro to QFT
• It asked participants to practice using the QFT to generate questions (I did It on a piece of paper even though there wasn't anyway to share), so we could see how powerful the technique was.
• It showed how two teachers used the technique with their students and examples of student work (my favorite project was from an elementary class that was studying the Hoover Dam. It would take very little work to transfer it to the Fort Peck Dam.) 
• It provided links to lots of additional resources.
• It offered a way to make distance learning more interactive.
• The tools they suggested will be useful for in-person/hybrid learning as well--especially if folks are socially distancing in the classroom because it allows/requires collaboration without breathing on each other. 
• Anything that can help students learn how to ask questions is good! (I'm always surprised by how hard they find it.)

Am I gushing like a fangirl? That's because I am. Check out this training and all of the materials on https://rightquestion.org/. 

P.S. Do you use QFT in your classroom? If so, I'd love to hear from you!

P.P.S. It's not too late to join us for our online discussion/PD "Integrating Montana History into English Language Arts," TODAY, November 17, from 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Register here and I'll send you a link.