Unanswered Questions

This is one of the concepts from Kaplan's Depth and Complexity that really confuses my students. My young kiddos aren't used to thinking in questions. I mean, think about it-how often are they really asked to question anything? I read once an idea: instead of posting objectives and I can statements-we post questions about what it is we are learning. Many students need practice in asking good questions.

In our daily routine we look at a photograph and ask questions about it. What don't we know.

In the beginning they ask basic questions: is that a tornado? What is that? But as we model examples of good questions, their questions get better too: is this Texas? Did anyone get hurt? I wonder what you are supposed to do if a tornado like that is coming toward you?

We also use it when finish a unit on something. What is something we still don't know about rainbows? Or after a story-we talk a lot about author's purpose but some books like The Giving Tree for example, I wonder what Silverstein's intentions were in writing it-did he want to show unconditional love or an example of selfishness? What happened to characters after we leave them? I wonder what happened to Wilbur from Charlotte's Web? I wonder what happened to Templeton?

I've seen teachers use this as just asking questions-but that's not quite right. Unanswered questions are ones we cannot simply Google the answers to-we don't know the answer, the challenge is in coming up with the questions.`