Getting Teens Wondering Before Trying to Teach Them Something

            In this article in Knowledge Quest, Ellen McNair (Fairfax County Schools, Virginia) says the best secondary-school librarians learn with their students, orchestrate inquiry projects, foster a growth mindset, get students discovering worthwhile content, take full advantage of available technology, and spur students to become critical, information-literate thinkers. These librarians have transitioned from being the “sage on the stage” to the “guide on the side,” says McNair, “creating a crosswalk between content standards and what it feels like to be a teenager inside a classroom in this, the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century – a time when information is ubiquitous and students need high-level problem-solving and collaboration skills to prepare for the future.”

            To create library lessons that don’t look and feel “old-school” to students, librarians need to consider two things:

-   There are always seven students in the room who know what you are about to tell them.

-   There are always a dozen students who have misconceptions about the information you are preparing to share with them.

Keeping these two hard truths in mind is the key to designing units and lessons that stand a chance of connecting with young adolescents.

McNair recommends kicking off with open-ended questions that connect the content being studied with students’ lives and families; then immersing them in compelling visual images and asking them to jot impressions; then getting students answering the question, “What are you wondering about this issue?” and exploring by looking for resources and asking questions. The most compelling sequence of questions is: What do you see? What are you wondering? and Why do you say that? Students then need to be provided with “multiple opportunities to think about how to most effectively convey their new ideas and then design, write, create, or perform an impactful communication,” says McNair. “The learning ecosystem in a middle- or high-school library is a perfect place to foster students’ communication skills.”

“By inviting teens to discuss and make personal connections to the content,” she says, “the students in the room who already know about the content and those who have misconceptions about the content are provided with opportunities to share and grow… Letting teens express opinions, imagine possibilities, and exchange ideas and experiences before educators deliver content yields a classroom of engaged learners and creative thinkers… Learning doesn’t occur when students listen. Learning happens when they talk, think, share, and reflect.”

McNair believes that think-like-a-teenager questions (quite different from standards-based questions) are an essential element in effective units and lessons. Here are some examples from civics, astronomy, chemistry, and history:

-   Standards-based question: What are the basic tenets of democracy?

-   Think-like-a-teenager questions: Who has authority over me? Who really has any authority?

-   Standards-based question: What are the core values of democracy?

-   Think-like-a-teenager questions: Do the people serve the government or does the government serve the people? In what ways do restrictive laws allow us to have freedom?

-   Standards-based question: What were the causes of the Civil War?

-   Think-like-a-teenager question: Is anything worth fighting for?

-   Standards-based question: What is microgravity?

-   Think-like-a-teenager questions: What would you like about being weightless? What opportunities would it afford? Is being weightless in space an “altered” state? Where would you rather live: in a world that is unpredictable or predictable? What might be challenging?

-   Standards-based question: What are the factors that influence solubility?

-   Think-like-a-teenager question: What is the difference between magic or mystery and science?

-   Standards-based question: What is the significance of cell specialization?

-   Think-like-a-teenager questions: When is being different an advantage? What differences between you and your siblings or cousins are significant?

-   Standards-based question: Who were the most important leaders in the ancient world?

-   Think-like-a-teenager question: What makes someone worth remembering?

When McNair made the mindshift from doing content delivery to first getting students thinking, she launched a unit on ancient civilizations by putting print and digital resources related to seven civilizations on different tables and asking students to stop at four of the tables and respond to the book covers, pictures, captions, and text and jot down what they were wondering. A biology teacher happened to be in the library and, seeing the productive chaos, asked McNair what was going on. She was so taken with the idea that she launched the next year’s biology curriculum by putting materials for each of the year’s units on tables in the library and having students peruse the resources and jot their “wonderings” about each topic on sticky notes. The teacher posted the notes around the perimeter of the classroom and at the beginning of each new unit put the pertinent questions on a whiteboard and Google doc and let students know that they would be answering their own questions over the next six weeks. “Brilliant!” says McNair.

The standard teacher prompt, Do you have any questions? “is loaded with social constraints and challenges,” says McNair. “Hearing this prompt, their inner narrative defaults to, ‘I should know this. What will others think when I ask a question? Maybe I should have heard or read this already.’” Instead, she suggests that teachers ask, What do you wonder? and listen carefully to what students say or write. Wondering opens students’ minds to new learning.

“Personalized Learning: Think Like a Teenager” by Ellen McNair in Knowledge Quest, November/December 2017 (Vol. 46, #2, p. 28-35), http://knowledgequest.aasl.org; McNair can be reached at ejones5@me.com. 
(The summary above is reprinted by permission from issue #712 of The Marshall Memo - a FABULOUS resource for educators.)