The Art of Inquiry
Questioning Strategies for K-6 (second edition)
by Nancy Lee Cecil and Jeanne Pfeifer
Portage & Main Press, 2011 ISBN
978-155379-254-3
$26, 165 pp, teacher’s resource
www.pandmpress.com
Humans learn by asking questions and young children drive the adults around them crazy asking endless questions. Yet, by the time they are in school, too often, they forget this skill. Adults, too, forget to ask questions beyond the obvious. Thank goodness there are people like Nancy Lee Cecil and Jeanne Pfeifer to show us how to develop both our own questioning skills and those of our students. They explain how to model open-ended questions, and suggest many strategies for teacher and student directed questioning that will enable constructing real meaning from experiences lived.
The book is divided into two sections. Part I is about questions: the variants and the cognitive skills they promote. Part II is a recipe book full of activities to stimulate creative and critical thinking skills. The authors also show how asking the right questions can help children to understand content, learn to ask effective questions of themselves, and make clear connections between diverse thoughts.
This revised edition has been updated and expanded to reflect the latest best practices in education. It includes reproducible charts, a bibliography and suggested readings.
This rich source of practical ideas is a must-have for all teachers, especially those working in the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme which is dedicated to the inquiry approach.
Review by Mary Moroska.
This review is from Canadian Teacher Magazine’s Sept/Oct 2011 issue.
