CSR

Habits of Mind

Lesson suggestion: Asking Questions & Posing Problems

 

Play a variation of “20 Questions.”

 

If you have not yet discussed the meaning of RAK with your class, try this. Otherwise any “20 Questions” type game will work. i.e. Entertain kids questions until they realize they are playing “20 questions” to learn February’s thinking behavior. As a teaser - tape a bag of candy to the board and reward the best questioners with the candy.

 

RAK/HOM lesson:

 

Day 1: Hand out RAK treats, (I added pencils and glue sticks to the candy. I also chose 3 names to earn a free book order pick and credited RAK.) being sure kids know they are (from) RAK. Do not reveal what RAK stands for. Later that day have kids fill out a form (example A) stating something positive about each of their classmates. Write PNK on the board to remind them to write Positive, Nice, and Kind words.(Compile all comments onto a separate and single sheet for each student.)

 

Day 2: Write “RAK” on the board. Stand quietly at the front of the room. Keep a tally of questions and “what if’s” asked/posed by students on the board. (Responses are something like: Yes, No, Maybe, I can’t say, etc.) During student questioning, randomly hand out positive comment papers to students one at a time. See if student questioning can self-direct itself to coming close to what RAK stands for. (i.e. - You may want to get them to the point of saying “what if…” and using a thesaurus to find the word “Random.”)

 

At any point during the questioning, you could stop the “game” and help kids identify that they arrived at the answer or at least moved toward getting an answer by asking questions.

 

You may also want to point out that they applied past knowledge to connect the RAK treats to the kindness of the comment papers.

 

FOSS works well for kids to develop “what if…” questions.