I absolutely loved the Question Formulation Technique. How to get students to develop good research questions is a question I’ve sort of had in the back of my mind all semester without every fully realizing it until seeing this activity. This is a great way to teach students how to develop good research questions, in any content area, without telling them that’s what they’re doing.
For my other class, 21st Century Teaching and Learning, our final project is a PBL unit. I am doing a third grade science unit titled “Save the Bees!” I have rearranged my calendar to include the QFT on day 2 before diving into the research on day 3 and after a guest speaker on day 1. I think this will be a great way for the students to come up with the driving questions for our PBL and help get them even more engaged and motivated to do the research and the work that this project will entail. They can draw on their experience with the guest speaker from the day before and really begin to dive deep into what they want to learn about bees.