Circles and more circles.
“For personal growth to take place, we need to add to the question-answer circle.”
I heard something somewhere about the circle of life. I have not found it. However, I have found the circle of learning. It looks something like this.
Questions and answers are the core to learning. In my first article on project-based learning, I talked about the probing question: Why is the sky blue? At a young age, we are naturally inquisitive. At a certain point, the inquisitive nature goes away. As educators, we need to reignite inquisitiveness in our youth. Maybe we need to start asking more questions.
For personal growth to take place, we need to add to the question-answer circle. We need a bridge between questions and answers. That bridge is discovery. When we engage in learning, we do more than just answer a question. We discover hidden secrets about the world around us. We also discover some things about ourselves. The learning circle grows larger.
As posed by my daughter’s teacher, the probing statement for this writing assignment was: My favorite time of year is _______________. Kaylynn quickly responded to this fill-in-the-blank statement: Autumn!
