Douglas Meyer’s article “Whose Inquiry Is It Anyway? Using Students’ Questions in the Teaching of Literature” lists an excellent framework for helping students develop deeper critical thinking patterns when reading and deconstructing texts. The idea of having a tier effect with a ten activity producing question system would work well when engaging students at all levels of the critical thinking process. This activity would be good to use from the beginning of the school year and/or semester. The teacher could start out with the simpler question activities and move to the more complicated question activities as the class progresses. By having the various levels the teacher can adjust the complexity upon the students’ progress.
Another advantage to this concept is that the students are more likely to read the text if they have to generate discussion questions, and by being involved with the questions they can feel like they have some control in their learning environment, along with the fact that everyone would be contributing and not one student in particular is singled out when a question is asked. This concept creates a facilitator/student environment, which gives the student more ownership in their learning process and progress.
I would be interested in hearing from teachers on Meyers’ concept. Has anyone tried this type of student engagement? If so, how did it work for you? Do you think this idea has merit?
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