Monday, October 3rd Update: Question Formulation Technique!

Hello Everyone!

Today we began with the Question Formulation Technique. Some of you may remember this from last year, and it is a set of steps to help students develop great questions. We started by brainstorming around the topic of our unit, keeping these rules in mind:

  • Write down anything that comes to mind
  • Try to write things doing in a question format
  • Don’t judge anyone’s questions — no great, fantastic, good question, or bad question, etc.
  • Write down as many questions as you can

Then, we went through the questions and reviewed them to see if they were really in a question format. We fixed any that needed adjustment with a who, what, why, where, when, how, etc.

Our next discussion was over the meaning of open and closed questions. Open questions take further research, are deeper, require multiple resources, and do not have an easy yes/no answer. Closed questions are “googleable”, have a right answer, and are quick to answer with one resource. Everyone labeled their questions with an “O” or a “C” for open and closed. They then chose one question to change between open and closed, closed to open. We discussed what kind of investigations need open or closed questions, too. How will you know which kind of question to ask? When is each kind useful?

Finally, we each wrote a question to add to our wonderings board about the unit, using the “jar of inquiry” approach. We look forward to explaining this more as we develop our understanding of how to ask deeper questions!

TONIGHT: 

Please finish reading information from the Articles of Interest page, under the section on Human Rights, the articles available on the Site C Dam. Tomorrow we will have discussions to answer these questions:

  • Where is the Site C Dam located exactly? (You need to be able to find it on a map)
  • Why is Amnesty International upset about the Site C Dam? (Do you know what Amnesty International is?)
  • Why are First Nations groups upset about the Site C Dam?  (Bonus: Which group of First Nations peoples are living in that area?)

TUNING IN articles are due tomorrow (Tuesday.)

YPC and Field Trip Payments are overdue; please get them in as soon as possible.

Field Trip Thursday Please see my previous post about the field trip.

Balloon Racers: I hope you made some progress on this today, and if you need a bit more time, I can give it to you tomorrow. You are allowed to work on it at home, too, but only if you want to.

Math: We are continuing with the next pages, but I did not assign them for homework.

WOW Letter D: Words for letter D are on the board. Due Friday due to field trip.