| Communities Resolving Our Problems: the basic idea | ||
| [SUP: Sharing Problems] | [THINK: Guidance] | [LEAP: Solving Problems] |
The 
information age with its high rate of change needs new systems that better support dealing with newness. Questioning is also critical in helping students regulate their own learning, yet studies have shown that the average student asks 1 question per 10 hours of instructional class time, and then primarily questions at the lowest level of thinking skills. Some 96% of questions overall come from the teacher and only 4% of teacher questions model higher level thinking questions (Graesser & Person, 1994). Against this challenging situation, our understanding of the importance of quality questioning continues to grow. Others are concluding that the presence of higher order thinking skills is an important measure of educational quality (Renaud & Murray, 2007). This indicates a need to create places and systems for thinkers and learners to reveal and share their questions, their
wonder about topics of study, with each other without having to route them through the teacher. All groups, whether offices or classrooms, can
benefit from non-digital systems (paper) that help accent the value of curiosity and creativity through raising questions.
As the clickable picture above by Lisa Finch of her fourth grade classroom Wonder Web indicates, they can take up little space, yet be highly visible. Many creative designs are possible. As a side benefit, such visual displays can be explained as a paper version of the role of the Internet and the added benefit of using the global Internet for sharing and questioning systems. These non-digital systems will parallel and expand on the way learning and sharing occur on the Internet. In these systems each participant becomes the ambassador for their own questions, seeking others to help in discussing and researching them to make better contributions to their solution. As the research increasingly shows, the best creativity has not been and is not the result of solo acts of thought that so many assume (Paulus & Nijstad, 2003; Sawyer, 2007).
In summary, two systems are introduced here: using tagboard or posters and paper; and using the tools of the World Wide Web to store and share electronic messages that raise questions and research and responses that lead to solutions.
The tagboard wonder web, wonder wall and the 
poster Internet are just different ways of
talking about the same thing. Its operation can take many different forms and purposes. Smaller versions might be used for teams, larger for an entire class.
Small pieces of paper for questions and comments (e.g., two packs of 3x5 cards; or Post-It notes, or cuts of scrap paper); standard tagboard (or poster space in room if one space for entire class?); if not using Post-It notes then have several scotch tape dispensers; pencils, 3x5 cards for each team or class display area that in very large font size say SUP and FAQ; a strip of paper in a large font saying Wonder Web or Wonder Wall. For longer term use, laminate the tagboard, especially if scotch-tape is used.
When possible, integrate access to even a single computer with Internet access somewhere in the building or the classroom using it for further research on their questions.
This procedure has the teacher or just a few students writing. When the class has finished listening to the teacher reading a story, whether they have gathered on the floor or are at their desks, ask for things the story has made them wonder about. For one or more of the questions being asked, do not answer it at this time. Instead, indicate that you want the class to think about that one. For those not yet writing, the instructor records the question, otherwise ask the question asker to write it down, date it and put it on the Wonder Web display under SUP (Still Unsolved Problem heading). If time, add more unanswered questions. If time, you might go beyond the story and ask if there are other things not related to the story that cause them to wonder. At another time that day or a different day, ask the class for responses to the question on the poster. Choose someone to write their response and staple or tape it to the bottom of the original question. There might be more than one response, that is several interesting variations to the responses for some questions. The teacher might add their own response. However, the goal is to keep this student centered.
This procedure has all students writing and working in teams. Distribute two of the 3x5 cards. Ask each participant to write any question that they would like that is a genuine, real or authentic question emerging from their personal interests and/or study of a class topic. On the 3x5 card, write your name, date, keyword or very short subject of the question and the question. Only one question per card. Participants can think of this card as a postcard, a record in a database or email.
While team members are writing, divide them into teams and seat them so that 4-6 are around the tagboard, with tape and a tape dispenser. Without taping, have them lay their questions on the left side of the tagboard when they finish writing. Each member must read the question that each places on the tagboard. Pick up the second 3x5 card and use it to write an answer or a contribution to any of the questions. Tape your answer card to the bottom of the question card. Tape the top card in this set to the right hand side of tagboard. Label this part, FAQ (Frequently Answered Questions). On the left side, unanswered questions will be labeled SUP (Still Unsolved Problems). [You could also have one large tagboard as a whole class bulletin board.] Provide a stack of 3x5 cards for the students to use when ever they wish to make further contributions of questions and answers. No matter how many contributions are made, the question asker decides the placement under SUP or FAQ.
If and when your students gain access to an Internet capable computer workstation, have them take an SUP question at your selection and move to the Internet workstation and research. Their research should be copied to a 3x5 card and taped on to the question card as another contribution. They might also use existing off-line library resources to work on the question when in the library. A contribution might consist of a web page address or a book title and its catalog number. When essay writing must be done, the questions can serve as topic ideas. Selected examples of essays that respond to the questions might surround the board with a number or piece of thread identifying the relationship between question and essay.
Once students have completed some variation of this exercise for the first time, you have some decisions to make. How many days, weeks or months will the poster be operation? For just the duration of this unit? Is it a center at which students can gather and work? Are the questions to be focused on just one topic, unit or lesson, or is it open to any kind of question on any topic? Label the poster with its timeline and its topic if it is to be focused. How many posters? Make a decision as to whether you will consolidate all work to one tagboard poster for the entire class, or continue with several team posters.
Take a close look at the classroom environment. Do students trust you and their classmates? If not, what must be changed? Expect that the first questions asked will be test questions, often at the basic recall level, to see what you and their classmates will do with the knowledge that they do not know something. The older the student, the more this will hold true. This needs to be discussed and expectations for classrooms rules made clear. With time and a sense of pyschological safety, higher order questions can and do emerge. Model higher order questioning patterns; cherish such questions when they appear.
There are also good ways to make a portable poster. From your local home supply store, 
buy a 4x8 sheet of 3/4" or 1/2"
foam insulation board and have the store cut it in half to make two sheets
that are 4x4 feet in size. If you buy thinner than 1/2" it will not be stiff enough. For easier movement in and out of a car, cut again into 2x4 panels.Your school will have rolls of poster paper in four foot
widths. Cover the 4x4 or 2x4 poster squares with your choice of color. Further, as the clickable picture from Kathy Warren on the right shows, they can be cut to any size. Experiment!
One approach would be use the poster piece or pieces for an entire class display dividing it into SUP and FAQ space. Another would be to mount tagboard on the poster for four teams if four pieces of tagboard are trimmed down to 24 inch width. This way four sheets of tagboard can fit on one side of a 4x4 space with four inches of room at the top of the poster for an identifying label. If you use stick-on picture hangers from a photo-supply store you can mount and unmount the tagboard enabling class teams to take to their own workspace. These are extremely light and portable making them easy to hang or mount on a wall. Two of them can be hinged with duct tape to stand on the floor and once the hinge is closed, the two together protect attached papers when moving the display. Their light weight makes it easy to trade posters between different classrooms. The Wonder Web becomes one poster space that your students, not you, can maintain all year long.
Each online question-answer system is a database that has its own procedures and login for question asking: Yahoo Answers; AskMeHelpDesk ; Expertcentral.com ; WonDir. Yahoo Answers is the largest and most active so far. Even Trivia web sites can help stimulate the questioning process, especially if students are choosing their own trivia quizzes in pursuit of their own question topics. Fun Trivia lists almost 3,000 quizzes for children. Googling "trivia" will reveal many more such sites. The Information Pyramid provides other more detailed and specialized ways to ask questions and pursue questions as well.
In the long term, classes should engage in both the Wonder Web and the online question databases while the number of computer workstations in the building increases. Once students gain significant access to Internet connected workstations, the Poster internet in the classroom will help keep the concept visible. That is, use the Poster internet in reverse of the previous process. Questions that emerge in the online question databases can be printed and added to the class Poster as a form of focused promotion or advertisement for their topic. To further enhance this concept, topic oriented web pages with links to related online question response pages and related resources can be also be created. Teams or the entire class could even create a group name under which to post questions and responses, an approach the bourbaki mathematicians took a century ago for publishing anonymously.
Finally, create a process by which your students become Community Question Ambassadors. Through this process encourage community members, content experts and parents to contribute real problems to the online database and encourage students to look for and bring to class problems provided by community members. Do workshops in your community or for parent night that explain the process. Of course, student 3x5 cards added in the classroom should still be encouraged. Older cards which have been added to the online database could be removed to make room for more on your class poster as necessary.
Use as many different variations of such question systems as fits the maturity level of your students. Invite your students to carry out this SUP process whenever their study leads to reflective moments, perhaps especially so towards the beginning and end of a unit plan or unit of study. Higher order questioning needs the strategic partnership of a strong base of knowledge. To grow one, you need to grow the other too.
The SUP process can also play a role in the assessment process. Compare your student writings with the writing samples on state writing exams. Note that the use of such a process provides reinforcement and practice for meeting the higher order thinking skills curriculum objectives of many states, and the answering of open-ended writing competency questions. Critical thinking and writing skills represent major educational competencies that are also needed for the use effective implementation of state computer competencies across the curriculum matrix's grade levels in many states. There is also a close relationship between this activity and the types of thinking needed for higher-order thinking skill type exams.
Do a quick tally of the types of questions students ask as an assessment measure of progress in teaching higher order thinking skills. How many new questions appear a week? Which ones fit which level of North Carolina's model for higher order thinking? If Marzano's model is too complex to contemplate then consider NorthWest Lab's simplified structure.
Though the wonder-web provides incentive, specific forms of higher order thinking will still need to be taught and modeled as part of classroom instruction. Further, having detailed knowledge of the authentic questions of students and learners in any setting provides great opportunity to guide instruction in the direction of enabling them to answer their own questions. Motivation is highest when the relevance of study to the learners' questions is highest. Motivation and knowledge growth is further improved through extending the WonderWeb process with digital skills that integrate digital compositions with the World Wide Web, the world's largest idea processor.
Graesser, A.C., & Person, N.K. (Spring 1994). Question Asking During Tutoring. American Educational Research Journal, 31(1) 104-137.
Paulus, Paul B.; Nijstad, Bernard A. (2003). Group Creativity: Innovation through Collaboration. Oxford University Press.
Sawyer, Keith (2007). Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration. Perseus Books Group
Renaud, Robert D.; Murray, Harry G. (2007). The Validity of Higher-Order Questions as a Process Indicator of Educational Quality. Research in Higher Education, 48(3), 319-351.
