Better questions, better answers, better life – Questions are the answer!
Children are great at asking questions and you as a parent can be the expert at giving them the bigger view by putting questions that are relevant to the subject or cicumstances . Putting questions to your children is a chance for you to guide them to create the amazing habit of continuously asking better questions.
The habit of better questions leads to better answers, better feelings and better motivation for when they are learning.
Are questions the answer to better learning?
Do you like questions? What a question!
We are all wired to be interested and fascinated by questions.
Just think of the following successful programs on TV.
Mastermind
Eggheads
Family fortunes
The weakest link
Who wants to be a millionaire?
Why are they are so successful? What is it about these programs that make them so popular?
The answer is that they are all about ………QUESTIONS!
People love questions, our minds are programmed to be interested in questions, and of course children love questions.
In fact you and your children think by using questions. Questions are the building blocks to thinking and children are natural question machines continually asking questions and if given the opportunity they soak up knowledge like sponges.
As soon as you or your children ask a question the mind focuses on finding the answer. The very act of asking a question causes the mind to think because thinking is the process of asking and answering questions.
Think about a simple thing like making dinner this evening. What are you thinking about? I’ll bet that you are asking questions, it can’t be helped. You automatically start to ask questions that need an answer. What will we eat? At what time? How many people is the dinnner for? There could be many other questions.
So, thinking is all about posing questions and receiving answers.
When you help your children ask questions and provide answers you are helping them with their thinking skills.
And so what questions should you ask and how can you get your children thinking?
The answer is by creating the right questions.
What questions to ask?
Do you remember the film The Jungle Book made by Walt Disney? This film was based on a story by the writer and explorer Rudyard Kipling.
Kipling wrote in his poem the Elephant’s Child:
“I keep six honest serving men,
They taught me all I knew,
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who?
We like to put these questions in this order:
What, where, when, how, why, who? We think it has a certain ‘ring’ to it this way.
The questions then need to be put in a way that helps your child think and find answers.
For example why not try the following with your child or children like I did not so long ago.
Go to a historical place and ask six questions beginning with the six words. For example:
What is this place?
Where is this place?
When did people live here?
How did they live?
Why don’t they live here anymore?
Who lived here?
So, questioning is one the most important skills that you can teach and guide your child to improve their ability to think and learn.
Questions help motivation!
At The Learning Well questions are continually asked and answered and you will hear us say “better questions, better answers, better life”. This is because in addition to thinking and learning, questions can also improve your children’s motivation.
How?
Because questions can change the focus of the mind towards better answers and these better answers can change the way your children feel. Better answers and better feelings leads to better motivation.
This next point is very important!
You can be an expert!
To repeat what was said above. Children are great at asking questions and you as a parent can be the expert at giving them the bigger view by putting questions into context. Putting questions to your children is a chance for you to guide them to create the amazing habit of continuously asking better questions.
The habit of better questions leads to better answers, better feelings and as we have seen better motivation.
Phil Race said that “All knowledge is the answer to a question”
So, to go back to the original question, yes, we think that better questions are indeed the answer to greatly improving your children’s learning!
