Make Just One Change

Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions

Dan Rothstein, Luz Santana

• Publisher: Harvard Education Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781612500997
• eBook ISBN: 9781612504544
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The authors of Make Just One Change argue that formulating one’s own questions is “the single most essential skill for learning”—and one that should be taught to all students.

They also argue that it should be taught in the simplest way possible. Drawing on twenty years of experience, the authors present the Question Formulation Technique, a concise and powerful protocol that enables learners to produce their own questions, improve their questions, and strategize how to use them.

Make Just One Change features the voices and experiences of teachers in classrooms across the country to illustrate the use of the Question Formulation Technique across grade levels and subject areas and with different kinds of learners.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction. “Why Didn’t I Learn This in School?”
• 1. The Question Formulation: Technique Teaching Multiple Thinking Abilities in One Process
• 2. Choose the Question Focus: The Starting Point for Student Questions
• 3. Introduce the Rules for Producing Questions: An Exercise in Metacognition
• 4. Students Produce the Questions: Divergent Thinking Unleashed
• 5. Students Improve the Questions: Closed- and Open-Ended Questions
• 6. Students Prioritize the Questions: Analysis and Convergence
• 7. Next Steps: “What Do We Do with All These Questions?”
• 8. Students Reflect on Their Learning: Cognition, Affect, and Behavior
• 9. A Memo to My Fellow Teachers: What I’ve Learned from Using the QFT
• 10. Students and Classrooms Transformed: A Community of Self-Directed Learners
• Conclusion. Questions and Education, Questions and Democracy
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Index