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
“Is the grading process needed?” Community College Students Question the Role of Grades
About 25 miles east of Los Angeles is Mt. San Antonio College, one of the largest community colleges in the state of California. Mt. SAC, as it is affectionately known as, has a diverse student population (~55% Latino, ~19% Asian, & ~11% White/ Non-Hispanic). The majority of students receive some financial aid (~75%) and most […]
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 […]
English Students Use the QFT to Drive AP-ready, SAT-ready, EPT-ready Learning
by Andrea Giordano-Rink In my 24 years of teaching high school English in the Sweetwater District in Southern California I have never used a strategy as powerful as the Question Formulation Technique (QFT). I am teaching Honors English 11 this year with a very unique set of students. These are the students, primarily, who have […]
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 […]