Using unanswered questions to teach - John Gensic

Carol Dweck, who is now at Stanford, conducted a research experiment where she compared 7th graders in two different groups. One group, she taught study skills to, and the other group, they taught a mini-neuroscience class about how their brain worked. They followed those two groups throughout their middle school math grades and noticed that the group who had the mini-neuroscience course was much more successful in their math grades than the group that had the conventional study skills, like being organized and using note cards.

The reason, they believe, that the group had the mini-neuroscience course did so much better is that they were picturing the formations and the connections in their brains occurring while they were learning. They were also able to have a certain level of resilience, knowing that their brain was more of a muscle and not a stone that couldn't grow any larger. Having this resilience, having students understand that their brains can continue to grow, allows them the confidence to struggle with situations, to wrestle out that information to come to deeper understanding.

So, how does this look in my classroom? How do I attempt to get students to struggle with information and wrestle with it so they come up with deeper levels of understanding? Primarily, I use unanswered questions. For example, I'll give students a jar and say it's 500 grams, and inside that sealed jar is a moist paper towel with about six to seven seeds. What do you think will happen to the mass of the container as those seeds begin to grow? And the students will then write on a little half-sheet of paper what they think is going to happen and why.

Depending on the class, I will have the students sometimes work in partners to kind of combine ideas, see what they think of each other's reasons, maybe work in groups of four and then groups of eight and come to consensus. But, sometimes, I'll have the students pass in all that information without conversing about it, and I will then read their explanations so that they are anonymously presented ideas that no student can rely upon the other smart students to say, "Oh, I agree with Sally because she's always got the right answer." That rarely happens in my class.

At this point, I will probably stop the conversation after I've read these out loud and leave students wondering. Wondering, what is the right answer? What evidence is good evidence? Because I want them, when they leave the classroom, to continue to want to know more, to continue to want to make more connections.

So, in addition to unanswered questions, I will often pose problems and projects for students to work on. And, when I have them work on these problems and projects, I'll give them about 15 to 20 minutes to brainstorm how to solve the problem or how to go about completing the project. And this 15 to 20 minutes happens well before I expect a lot of work to be done on the project. I don't want them to try to produce too much because I want them to try to figure out in their brains, give themselves a chance to struggle with the information overnight, while they go about their daily activities.

For example, I might give a project where you need to explain or teach a 6th grader the simple concept of endosymbiosis. The students then have a whole bunch of questions generated related to this project. They have things that they need to know from me, from other resources. But I have not given them the questions and the answers to memorize; their brain is actively seeking out the understanding of this concept so that they can teach it to others.

We would like to, as teachers, think that students love everything that we teach them, and we think that they understand everything and want to engage with our content outside of the school day. Students don't do that. Most students don't do that. So, through mass one-way text messaging, I'm able to resend them the question or the topic from that day to get them to re-engage and touch the content one more time. And, hopefully, get that seed planted in their brain so that they want to think about it more, so that their brains come up with those "Ah-ha!" moments at obscure times.

My goal is for students to generate the story, their story, of the content that I teach. I would love for them to completely understand my story and understand it deeply, but I know if I just get them to understand it as I understand it, that will simply ooze out of their brains, and they will not have information and the knowledge that is applicable in other situations. They will not have knowledge that they can ask more questions about. They are simply understanding to please me, and then it's gone.

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." We, as teachers, need to encourage and facilitate students staying with problems longer. Thanks.