Tag Archives: questioning

Problemize the learning

Yesterday I heard Warren Woytuck from The Critical Thinking Consortium present at the ACE Conference. Here is one of his slides about problematizing a question:

Note how by adding value descriptors, by specifying the intention of the question, the question changes to one where students need to compare and contrast, to qualify, make judgements, and/or explain their answers. And more than that, students need to ask more questions to come to an answer.

To me, that’s the key to a problemizing a question… How can you change a question so that it provokes more questions? If you ask a question and either:

A) Google can answer it; or

B) You already know the answer students will come up with; or

C) All students come to the same conclusion…

Then you didn’t really pose a good problem. You didn’t promote critical thinking.

When your questions are problematized, students need to interact with the question in a more meaningful and engaged way.

What’s on your home screen?

I think it is interesting to see what people put on their phone’s home screen. It is a little peek into their personality. Where do they spend their digital time? What social media do they use? What do they do for entertainment?

I think I want to start a little informal research and ask people about their home screen preferences. What will I learn from that? Will it change what I keep on my home screen?

What do you keep on your home screen, and why are those things important enough to take up that space?

The Socratic Process ~ 6 Steps of Questioning

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…And on that note:
Truly Questioning Everything
How much of what we do at school is done because TTWWADI (That’s The Way We Always Do It)?
What ‘norm’ can you question and challenge in school? What ‘practice’ bugs you about the way things are done, that you have the courage to change?
The questions in the image above are great for students… And if we are honest with ourselves, for us too!