Dr Bunhead’s Tutorial 2 – Involving Kids

Part one - using questions

Use structured questions more often to draw kids through the workshop. Think about good leading questions to keep them thinking and engaged.
For example,
PG:     If we heat the air up inside this balloon what will happen to it?
Pupils: Catch fire / fly in the air
PG:     Let’s find out -> -> it goes up
PG:     So, which way does hot air go, up or down?
Pupil:  Up     
PG:     That’s right. Hot air rises, it goes up. (When hot air goes upwards we call it convection. <- you can add this for brighter/older kids)Find the right level of question, not too easy to patronize them, not so hard they don’t know where to start. If they struggle to answer a question, wait a short while for their answers then offer a little more information, wait again for them to try again. If they succeed good, if not then give them a little more of a hint.  But
MAKE SURE THEY GET THE REWARD OF ANSWERING THE QUESTION CORRECTLY

Part two - types of questions

Be sure of why you are using a question and what you want it to achieve. If it does not elicit the response you are looking for then modify your question or change the type of question.There are 3 types of question:
CLOSED QUESTION
        Yes or no answer. Generally, of limited use.
OPEN QUESTION
        Many possible answers.
        Can be used to:
                break the ice
                establish if kids understand what they’ve learnt;
                to establish what they already know;
                get them thinking about the topic 

RHETORICAL QUESTION
        You already know the answer and are raising the question to  connect to the next part of your explanation.

The structure of a question is extremely important in ensuring you get the answer you want from the kids. Even changing one word can have a dramatic shift in their responses.
For example, after a demonstration of chemiluminescence kids were asked
“Can anyone tell me the name of any animals that glow in the dark?”
Kid 1: A dog
Me: Which part of a dog?
Kid 1: It’s eyes
Me: That only works if you shine light into the dog’s eyes. These animals make their own light without shining anything on them. Can anyone tell me the name of an animals that makes its own light?
Kid 2: Cats
Me: Which part of a cat?
Kid 2: It’s eyes
Me: That’s the same as dogs. Cat’s eyes bounce back some of the light that’s shone into them. It’s called reflection and you have to shine some light on them to see there eyes light up. Can anyone tell me the name of an animals that makes its own light. NOT AN ANIMALS EYES. It’s an animal that glows without shining any light on it.
Kid 3: Rabbit
Me: Which part of a rabbit?
Kid 3: It’s eyes
This cycle would go on ad nauseum every time I got to this part of the show! I could not break the kids out of this process of trying to identify the right animals eyes. They weren’t hearing my explanations because they were already too busy trying to work out which animal eyes it must be.

One day I changed the question to
“Can anyone tell me the name of an INSECT that glows in the dark?”
That usually elicited the fireflies and glow worms I wanted.
If I got no appropraite reply I used the hint
“They’ve got a green glow”
If no appropraite reply from that then
“They fly around and have bright green backsides”
That last suggestion was always enough to get the ‘firefly’ answer I was looking for.

Advertisement