While taking one of my Grad courses, I came across a book titled Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction. It is a teaching resource that focuses on students’ early literacy skills. One thing that I really like about this book is that it provides lists of words that teachers can give their students and have them sort the words according to any patterns as long as they can justify the process. Through this activity, my students not only had fun but also were able to improve their literacy skills. This week, I was in my students’ shoes. While I was not asked to sort words, I had to organize my Quickfire questions in categories, just like how my students had to arrange the given words. (Feel free to check my Question Quickfire blog post). As I sat down to brainstorm ideas on how to best organize my questions, I heard my teacher voice asking, “What do you notice?” which is a question I often ask my students when they have difficulty starting the word sort activity. Pondering on the questions as well as the categories where they belong, I was able to see how they relate to each other and to have a deeper understanding of my questions. It was overwhelming to consider these many questions about my professional workplace side by side. I had to constantly remind myself not to worry about the solutions but to focus on the questions. Spending time with my questions, as suggested by Berger (2014), the author of A More Beautiful Question, led me to more questions such as “Am I asking the right questions?”, “do I have a different mindset when dealing with different questions?” and many more. Reference: Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: the power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. New York: Bloomsbury. Kim, H. (2020, July 26). Question Quickfire [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/3XNtA17Iyts
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