After reading Richard Curwin’s Edutopia blog entitled, “Questions Before Answers: What Drives a Great Lesson?,” I reflected on my own practice and what motivated my students.
While I was a social studies teacher, I found that my students were not terribly motivated to learn history - regardless of the questions I asked. Wanting to make the study of WW I more relevant to the class of 13 year-olds sitting in front of me, I decided to ask them what they knew about WW I first. From the beginning, I could determine there were students who knew a great deal about WW I, some who knew almost nothing, and a majority of them were confusing WW I with WW II. I put all their knowledge about WW II in a “parking lot” for later. In pairs, I had them take the information they had just brainstormed and organize it in a way that made sense to them. The chatter soon started as they engaged in asking each other questions. As their “Ticket to Leave,” I had them generate those questions on paper.
Most of the
questions I would be answering in my lessons, however, there were a few
questions that I had not considered before. After school, I generated a list of
all the questions my students wanted answered about WW I, which I posted on the
back bulletin board. At the beginning of
the next period, students claimed ownership of their particular questions as
they gravitated to the back of the room.
This started an animated discussion about WWI. Each day my students would inform me which
questions they could now answer based on previous day’s lessons or reading
assignments. Those questions then became
the quiz for the following day. Each
day, students became more and more motivated to answer those questions I was
not addressing. They would present their
findings at the beginning of class; this almost always generated more
questions. Students who normally didn’t
participate, started researching such topics as uniforms, medals, weapons, battles,
generals, etc. I taught the material
outlined in the curriculum and my students added all the information that made
the topic interesting to them.