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E-zine

Vol. 3, No. 2 Using Questivities™ to Develop Creative and Critical Thinking

This E-zine article focuses on teaching our students how to think! So many school assignments require only correct answers and little or no thinking. Differentiated instruction often involves projects, products and performances created by students to show what they know. Sometimes student projects are excellent but time and again they are put together hurriedly and appear to be developed with little or no real thinking. To encourage students to think both critically and creatively before they start the project activity and to reflect this thinking in the resulting project are the two goals of using Questivities™. The new Questivities™ ('Questioning Activities') format consists of an interdisciplinary Project Activity along with a series of Thinking Questions designed to stimulate creative and critical thinking and to give practice in research skills. These questions are starter questions that should be done before students begin the project. Students who answer the Questivities™ Thinking Questions before doing the Project Activity create projects that reflect higher levels of thinking, more creativity and more evidence of research. Questivities™ take students beyond just working on a project to thinking about the project ideas in more depth and greater detail. Questivities™ can be used in many ways: Use individually, in partners or in a group setting. Use as a requirement in conjunction with a project in a differentiated unit of study. Use them to enhance and extend individual work and research. Use as extension activities in a learning center. Questivities™ also make excellent alternate activities for students who compact out of the regular curriculum. Questivities™ incorporate Learning Modalities, Learning Styles, Bloom's Taxonomy and Multiple Intelligences. They are assessed using mini-rubrics or other performance assessment criteria. Questivities™ are written on a user-friendly one page form. A sample is below. The form has the following elements: Project Activity that provides the focus for the Questivities™ Learning Modality Learning Style Bloom's Taxonomy level Multiple Intelligences Project Question (the question that will be answered by doing the activity) Assessment (Mini-Rubric or Criteria Card) for the Project Activity Questivities™ Thinking Questions Active Question Questivities™ work well with almost every grade level, subject area and type of classroom. You can write your own using the form provided in this E-zine article. You can also purchase Questivities™ that are written and ready to use! They contain standards for every project activity, a unit plan, blank forms, twelve completed Questivities™ plus fourteen other project activities. These are available from Pieces of Learning (www.piecesoflearning.com). Click here to see a sample page from my Japan Questivities™ unit. You may want to try this one with your students to see how it works. In order to view and print it, you will need a program such as Adobe Acrobat Reader. You can easily download a free copy at www.adobe.com: Thinking using higher level questions such as "What would happen if…?" and "Would you rather… ?" is an important 21st century skill. We want our children to be the thinkers and questioners as they grow into adulthood. Using Questivities™ is one way to make this happen!  Coil, C. (2007). Using Questivities™ to Develop Creative and Critical Thinking. E-Zine, Vol. 3, 2. www.carolyncoil.com.