A More Beautiful Question

“The important thing is not to stop questioning.  Never lose a holy curiosity.” –Albert Einstein

Kristin Hicks, the media specialist at Cumberland Road Elementary School, has started Genius Hour with her elementary students.  Genius Hour is a time when students develop their own inquiry questions and then try to chase down the answers.  It’s a bit hard to trace the origin of Genius Hour.  Some people point to Google (they allow 60 minutes each week to each employee to work on new ideas or skills) but others point to Daniel Pink and his book Drive for popularizing Genius Hour.

Whatever the origins, it is now alive and well in Hamilton Southeastern.  Several of you reading this are using it in classrooms at HSHS, and others are tinkering with Genius Hour-like ideas.  Kristin’s approach is to prompt her CRES students, including kindergarteners, to ask questions that really interest them.  After identifying their questions, their task is to find the answers and share what they learned.

Below are a few recent questions from her kindergarteners.  They range from interesting, to funny, to profound:

• How do spiders spin webs?
• How big are dinosaurs, and were people living when dinosaurs did?
• What does a fox really say?
• How do words and pictures get into books?
• How did god live before all the people got here?

Kristin is working with her students to revise and refine the questions and helping them start researching.  These are her words:

After we had the conversation about questions, I asked them how we might go about finding this information.  There were no pauses.  They started throwing out words like iPads, computers, and Google.  All of their suggestions were electronic.  I guess I was surprised because we were sitting in the library, a room full of books.  We then talked about the fact that iPads and computers are tools, and that we might use search engines to find websites on these tools.  Or, we could use the tools to search databases.  I brought up the idea of searching our library for books.  I also mentioned that we might ask an expert. 

One student piped up and said, “Oh yeah, we could ask ‘Series.’” 

When I asked who her who Series is, she said, “You know, when you hold that button down on your phone?  That lady comes on, and you can ask her stuff.  I talk to her all the time.”  (By the way, this student is the daughter of one our HSHS staff members!)

Kristin says that her students are digging in, taking notes, and researching.  A parent who is publishing a book is coming in to talk about that process, and one young lady wants to make a video to share her findings because “I might be too shy to stand up in front of people.”

Kristin’s parting comment, “This experience has confirmed the fact for me that some of us may not be ready for this shift in learning, but our youngest learners are ready!”

“Without a good question, a good answer has no place to go.” –Clayton Christensen

Since my wife told me about Genius Hour at CRES, I have been doing some reading and thinking about questions and questioning.  On and off over the next few months, I would like to explore the importance of questioning and inquiry in the classroom.  For now, I encourage you to think about the important questions these kindergarteners are asking, and I’ll leave you with one more thought.

Warren Berger, the author of A More Beautiful Question, asked this question to Saul Wurman, the original creator of the TED Conferences: Why do kids ask so many questions—and why do they stop?  Wurman’s response: “In school, we’re rewarded for having the answer, not for asking a good question.” 

Ouch!

Always the beautiful answer

Who asks a more beautiful question.

--e.e. cummings

What can we do to turn this around?  How can we reward a good question posed by our students?  How can we help Kristin’s kindergarteners—and our high school kids—keep, in Einstein’s words, their “holy curiosity”? 

Those are questions worth asking.

Have a great week, HSE.  I hope you return from break refreshed, rejuvenated, and ready to help students ask the “more beautiful question.”

Phil