Promoting Curiosity

I was really struck by the sentiment of this article:

http://smartblogs.com/education/

Basically, they are saying that instead of maybe asking your child what they learned at school today (I have taught a lot of staff kids over the years and cringe when the answer to that question is "nothing"...what!). Asking what good questions did you ask today?

I am a huge proponent of fostering curiosity in my munchkins. Sometimes it throws off my groove when we are in the middle of a lesson in punctuation and someone asks "do fish drink water". But it is something that I model for them and want them to share. I still remember in the beginning of the year, we were doing a calendar lesson and one of my students asked "how did they invent calendars--who decided this month is September?". That's a really good question for a 5-year old!

Some ways to model it are really common sense. Praising the questions, asking questions yourself. I don't know if fish drink water, we'll look up the answer to that one this afternoon! I've posted before about the Wonder Wall I have in the classroom. Students can post questions that they have on sticky notes and we do pull some of those to look up on Fridays.

I also make it part of my oral language activities daily to have them ask questions about a photograph. What do we still not know? Or when we read a story-there are often questions that are left unanswered? I wonder if Goldilocks ever broke into someone's house again? I wonder if the 3 Bears started locking their doors? :)

Anyway, I liked the concept of it and am going to share it with my parents this week--I thought I'd share it with y'all too! :)