A college readiness partnership
00126_12_ASCA_Ad.indd 1 7/16/15 12: 18 PM 80 E D U C A T I O N A L L E A D E R S H I P / S E P T E M B E R 2015
more questions. They’ll remember
much more if they’ve had to struggle a
little to find the answers.
Putting Questions to Work
Last year, we embarked on a
Challenge-Based Learning Project,
a collaborative, hands-on multidisciplinary project that encourages
students to research a real-world
problem and use the technology at
their disposal to design a solution. The
teacher presents a theme or big idea,
and then students identify the specific
challenge they want to tackle.
The overarching theme for our
project was sustainability, and students had to articulate a specific
driving question that was dynamic
enough to fuel ongoing research.
Students generated a wide range of
questions about issues related to both
social and environmental sustain-
ability. I was amazed by the variety of
questions. How does water pollution
in California affect human and animal
health? How does bullying at a young
age affect a person mentally and emo-
tionally? How can the United States
effectively regulate helium depletion?
As I read through my students’
work, I realized they truly had learned
how to ask complex questions. These
dynamic questions fueled two months
of research and collaboration. It
was rewarding to see how the work
we had put into learning how to
articulate a strong question, search
online for credible sources, and think
critically about that information was
now bearing fruit in a student-driven
project.
At the end of this project, as students presented their findings and
shared their action plans for change,
I was amazed to find that I was
learning an incredible amount. The
flow of teaching and learning had
shifted. Students were no longer just
consumers of information; they were
also generators of information—
because they had learned how to ask
good questions. EL
Catlin Tucker is an English language
arts teacher at Windsor High School in
Sonoma County, California. Her most
recent book is Creatively Teach the
Common Core Literacy Standards with
Technology (Corwin, 2015). She blogs at
www.Catlintucker.com. Follow her on
Twitter @Catlin_Tucker.
