Yesterday we read an article about how you die if you fall into a black hole. Each Wednesday we read a scientific article and identify facts and claims within the article as a push to include more work on scientific literacy as part of the common core standards. In addition to reading the article, students wrote questions about black holes. I’ve been trying to spend a lot more time in class generating questions to help play on natural curiosity and work towards student driven learning. My students had many, many questions about black holes and were on the verge of fighting over each other to get their question out.
I want to start either a parking lot board or a box for students to put random science questions that I answer at the end of each class. I’d like to let students allow their curiosity to drive them more in class, but it can be hard to connect each thing we are learning to an interesting question. I hope that students will write up good questions regularly so that this can be an exciting part of the class. I also plan to use this as a way to try to drive positive behavior throughout the class period. If students end up enjoying this and get used to it, the question answer time can be a privilege that can be taken away if they waste time.