Ask a better question
Beta- Goal
- Children ask questions about a picture, sort them by whether looking harder would answer them, and find that the ones the picture cannot settle are the interesting ones.
- Materials
- One OuiSi Photo-Card set. One card per pair. Board or chart paper.
- K–1
- Questions spoken, one each, sorted together as a class — about 24 min.
- Grades 2–3
- Three written questions, sorted in pairs — the full 30 min.
- Grades 4–5
- Take a question from the second pile and say how you would go and find the answer out. The full 30 min.
1 · Three questions
8 minOne card per pair, face up. No discussion of what it is first.
Write three questions about this card. Not answers — questions.
Many children have never been asked to produce a question rather than answer one. Expect a slow start and do not rescue it.
To a pair that stalls.
What is the first thing you want to know?
2 · Two piles
10 minPairs keep their own card in front of them. Draw a line down the middle of their paper.
Some of your questions this card can answer if you look harder. Some it cannot answer however long you look — though somebody, somewhere, might know.
Sort your three. Each one goes on one side of the line.
Then take four or five onto the board, with the card held up beside each one.
Sorting at the table first is what makes this work. A question about a photograph the rest of the room cannot see is not something they can sort.
What color is it sits on one side. Who was standing there sits on the other. The second pile is not impossible, it is just beyond this photograph, and keeping that distinction is the lesson. Children sort these accurately and are surprised how many land there.
3 · The ones the card cannot answer
8 minPick a question from the second pile that the picture gives you a clue about. What might the answer be, and what is your clue?
If there is no clue in the card at all, say so. We would need to ask somebody is a finished answer.
Not every question has evidence behind it, and naming that is as good a result as a guess. Where there is a clue, hold the word guess — otherwise by the close the room has turned a good one into a fact.
If a pair finishes early.
Write one more question that nobody in this room could answer.
4 · Close
4 minWhich question on the board would you most like answered?
Leave the board up. A question the class chose is a better writing prompt than one you would have chosen.
Watch for
- Only checking a guess. That is a bird, right? is a real question — it asks for confirmation. Take it, then ask for another: what else do you wonder about it?
- Answering instead of asking in step one. Children default to it. Remind them once, then let the page stay half empty for a minute.
- Treating the second pile as a failure. Say early and clearly that a question this card cannot answer is not a bad question.
- Children who like rules will want to know which pile is correct for a borderline question. Let the room argue it — the argument is the lesson.
Adapt
- Multilingual learners — give the question words on the board — who, what, where, when, why, how — and the structure follows.
- OuiSi Nature — scan the code afterward. Some of the second pile turn out to be answerable after all, which makes the point better than you can.
- Writing follow-on — each child answers their favorite question from the second pile as a short piece of writing.
- Start of a unit — use a card related to your topic and the board becomes the unit's question wall.
Standard codes vary by state and district — these are the skills exercised, for you to map to your own.
Pairs well with Looking closely, which works the same observation-to-inference move in science.