Imagine a classroom where every student is excited and fully engaged in a personal quest to explore, asking questions, and designing ways to seek out answers. Where the teacher is a resource and facilitator as students are empowered by curiosity and a sense of purpose. Imagine a classroom where students are learning from their evolving questions, enthusiastically creating a path of growing knowledge, discovering a plethora of possibilities for the mind to explore, owning their learning. I want to create a classroom like this. Student-driven learning embodies the best of instruction, student engagement, ownership, and differentiation. The day I introduced this activity into my classroom, my students were excited, highly focused, and actually thanked me!
Questioning is not a new strategy used to explore a topic. The Socratic Method, scientific inquiry, comprehension strategies, and Blooms Taxonomy are familiar questioning-strategies used by most educators. Questions have led the greatest of minds to profound discoveries. When asked why he became a scientist, Nobel Laureate Isidor Rabi attributed his success to his mother. Every day, she would ask him the same question about his school day: "'Did you ask a good question today?' Asking good questions – made me become a scientist!"
Rabi said.
2
One's questions can help one to look beyond, stretching one's thinking and extending the possibilities that lie before us. Learning how to question may just be the catalyst to our future.
