How English teachers use the Question Formulation Technique to support students as they pursue deeper understanding of texts and develop their critical thinking. By Chris Orchard Teaching English is more than drilling students in the details of punctuation, pronouns and parallel structure, though such things are important. It’s more than lecturing about poetry and prose, […]
Right Question Stories from the Field: Beowulf, Romeo and Juliet, and Modern-Day Hester Prynnes
It’s All About the Question
By Ellen Gammel The Fitchburg High School state report came back… Level 3… again. For schools in Massachusetts, this Department of Education label informs us we are in the bottom 20% of schools – definitely a label no school wants. The discouragement and frustration came to the forefront, and then the big question: Why? Why […]
To Adapt, or Not to Adapt?: How Fidelity-Of-Implementation of the QFT Can Impact Student Outcomes
by Shelby Clark In the fall of 2015, my colleagues at Boston University and I set out to find out how the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) impacts high school student outcomes, in particular curiosity, divergent thinking (creativity), school engagement, and self-efficacy. On the one hand, we were particularly interested in knowing whether teaching students to […]
Biography and Bioethics: 9th Graders Ask Questions about the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
It all began with a question. For writer and journalist Rebecca Skloot, it was a question she asked as a high school student in a college biology lecture that launched her into a decades long research and writing process that eventually became the New York Times Bestseller, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. After a […]
Student Questions, Shifting Classrooms
by Erica DeVoe The past three books I’ve read changed me. Actually, they defined me. No wait, they articulated what I’ve always known myself to be, but I had yet to articulate it for myself… and that, that is what saved me. Grant Lichtman’s The Falconer, Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question, and Santana and Rothstein’s […]
The Question Formulation Technique in Action
Here’s a clip from a video showing Boston students actively using the QFT. For the full video walking through the whole process, watch on the Educator Network .
Out of the Dust: A Teacher’s Reflections on Getting Students to Ask Questions in Literacy
This post is the last in a series of guest blogs by Robert Welch on how he utilizes the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) in his curriculum around the novel Out of the Dust. To see his previous blogs click here. Ultimately , students left their experiences reading and discussing Out of the Dust with a good of […]
Elevating Socratic Seminar by Having Students Ask The Questions
“…this was clear evidence that the QFT was a process that students viewed as an authentic and effective tool for their learning, not just something that their teacher was making them do.” In our last weekly post from the field, educator Robert Welch describes how his students embrace the Question Formulation Technique and use it […]
Controversy as Catalyst for Questioning: Students Question the Rolling Stone Cover after Marathon Bombing
This Tuesday, our weekly post from the field comes from Matt Parrilli (on RQI Network @mparrilli), an English department chair in Illinois. by Matt Parrilli Why do they make him look like a celebrity?” “Was the date and location of the bombing significant to him?” “What did his family do to fail him?” “Does where […]