Strictly pedagogical

Teaching students to ask questions is not an easy task. This is the first in a series of two posts that will explore ways that teachers may ask questions to help their students "learn more from text and from the world around them." He is using the book Goldilocks and the Three Bears to model a number of strategies to use in the classroom

* Tell - Read the story or have them read the story. Ask questions that refer back to the text

* Suggest - Provide "children with choices about what might happen next or possible opinions they might have."

* Ask a closed question - "These questions generally elicit yes or no answers. They can bring students to different temporal areas or elaborations of details, but the extent of this is structured by the question."

* Ask an open ended question - questions that provide lots of options.

* The two-question rule - follow the first question with a second question allowing students to probe more deeply (and sometimes a third question).

Find examples of questions for each area listed above as well as the reasoning behind why the two-question rule is a good one to use.

This is why homeschooling is so crucial. If children are given the tools: educational games, toys, books and resources at home, from they get up in the morning they are interacting with a variety of learning resources which develop their brain. Games such as: *Mathlink Cubes an interactive and visual way to get to grips with mathematics - a hands-on manipulative kit can be used to teach a range of maths concepts to all ages;

*Homeschoolsource's classic game of charades is designed especially for children to help them play and learn. This educational game will help children express themselves by acting out a charade.

*Help develop their creativity with geological material such as crystals and gemstones. Or what about the ecology of the solar system or Uncle Milton’s Star Theatre for creating light like Halley’s Comet? 

*As they get older you provide word games, lateral thinking puzzles, dictionaries and thesaurus's to develop their verbal thinking and expression and challenge existing views (critical thinking).

*Microscopes and Binoculars illustrate different views of the world. They encourage lateral thinking, leading children to question: “What if?”  

With these home resources children will learn to get their own answers and develop critical thinking through interaction with learning tools. At school the teachers will be the ones rushing out to find these homeschoolsources!!!!

This infographic is worth a close look. Its value lies in helping teachers plan and design learning outcomes, assessment tasks and learning activities that enable learners to master lower level understanding and move toward higher order thinking and critical enquiry. It maps and explains Bloom's learning levels and learning domains in a way that illustrates the hierarchy and relationships, however each learning level, within each domain, has embedded verbs that are not included here.

What is deeper learning? This post defines it as the following six competencies:

* mastering content

* critical thinking

* effective written and oral communication

* collaboration

* learning how to learn

* developing academic mindset

The post shares an example from one school that uses deeper learning, provides additional resources on how to cultivate academic mindset, and deeper learning and the common core, educators and deeper learning, and getting started with deeper learning.

An excellent story for lecturers or teachers thinking in content curation as a tool in their aulas.

Useful for educators - key digital literacy skill

content curation and critical thinking skills