All of us were growing since we were baby and become curious and curiouser about our environment including of little things such as why the clock ticks or how can the clouds move and this has make the world realize that children are natural scientists. At play, children will tend to answer the questions that are popping out in their head such “how does this happens?”, “why are things like this?” or “what makes it to be like this?”. Questions and questions are bombarding parents and teachers about different topics, but do you know that this is your opportunity to encourage children to have scientific thinking?
Before we go deeper in this topic, let us understand what productive questions is. Productive questions are questions that teachers or students can ask that produce an answer, with the answer not only verbal but often being shown by the student physically (Martens, 1999).
However, it is certain that the thoughts and way of children thinking are not necessarily scientific thinking because these could be merely casual observations. Here we have corralled 8 ways how you can encourage scientific thinking through asking productive questions.
1. Essential Steps
To encourage children to have scientific thinking at a very young age, you need to know where to start. You need to make sure that you are emphasizing the important skills in science studies. These are the seven (7) ingredients which are the secret of a great recipe of science.
- Observe – Usually children will tend to “jump” into conclusions or actions when they are doing any experiments. As parents or teachers, it is important for us to remind the children to take time to observe and noticing everything by using their senses.
- Compare – Have children to go into details when they are exploring something. To teach children to compare, ask questions, about the similarities, differences, sizes, smells, or even textures and guide them to compare between subjects by using all these information
- Sort and Organize – Children need to understand organizable traits that objects have. They need to grasp the concept that an object can belong to different groups at a time and children also could learn to arrange images into graphs.
- Predict – Before starting the experiment, children need to share out ideas what they expect will happen at the end of the experiment. Children will understand the concept by doing prediction and experiments to find the answer, so there should be a lot of opportunities for children to do so.
- Experiment – This is where children will start to explore and try out their ideas. For this step, time and material need to be provided for the children. They should have ample time to do the experiment, document the data or to repeat the experiment and sufficient experiment tools.
- Evaluate – For young children, this is where they should learn how to document all the data they obtained from their experiments. It could be as simple as a recording table for the children.
- Apply – When children understand the concept, this is the stage where they can broaden their knowledge by applying the concept with different subjects, materials or experiments.
2. Evidence of Discoveries
To promote scientific thinking through productive questions, you as parents and teachers need to visualize all the discoveries your children have made. By visualizing everything your children have asked, did, or curious about, you can keep track of your children development and start an experiment to find out the answers to all your children’s questions. There are a lot of methods for you to document these such as:
- Capture the photos of the end-result of the experiment
- Create a scientist journal to record the question, science tools needed, experiment steps, data and result
- “Walls of Questions” where all the questions will be pasted or written on your bulletin board in classroom or wall around your house
3. Manipulatives
The next way is to provide manipulatives for the children to play and use. There are a lot of educational toys that are available online such as STEM Kit to encourage scientific thinking. Through manipulatives, children will tend to ask productive questions that will lead them to do more experiments.
For instance, if a child is assembling a rubber band powered car, children will be curious on how the speed will change if there are more or less rubber bands are being used. This will make children challenge their previous ideas.
Some of the manipulatives that you may provide to your children are:
- Puzzles
- Matching toys
- STEM Kit and more
4. Prior Knowledges
It is crucial for you to use productive questions based on their prior knowledge to enhance the science concepts that children understand through simple experiments. Science concepts are often misleading the children to give inaccurate conceptions which can be avoided by doing multiple experiments to prove the concepts.
5. Ask, Ask and Ask
Questioning children with open-ended questions will also encourage scientific thinking in children. If you are choosing this way, you need to make sure that you are not looking for the textbook answer from children, but instead you are encouraging children to communicate and share their thoughts based on their level of understanding.
Children are curious which makes them ask unexpected and interesting questions about what they observe or hear, for instance “What do you see happens to the caterpillar?” or “Do you wonder about how birds can fly?”. These questions will often lead to interesting discussion and can also provoke further investigation. Some of the open-ended questions you can ask your children are:
- What patterns did you notice?
- What else might have caused ………?
- What do you think could be an alternative explanation?
- What evidence do you have?
- What were your assumptions?
6.Outdoor Discovery
It is a cliché, and everyone knows about it that learning does not only occur between the four walls of a classroom or home. It could go beyond that! But how well does this outdoor learning helps children in terms of encouraging scientific thinking?
That children will have the opportunity to connect and collaborate with the community to increase children’s knowledge and also to enhance their social and emotional growth. When children interact with the world outside of their classroom, there will be a lot of stimulus that children will be exposed with as the ground of their scientific thinking and you can ask productive questions based on their experiences.Outdoor discovery does not only bringing out the children at the garden or a field trip but it also means
7. Respond
As parents and teachers, it is understandable that sometimes we do not get back to our children when they ask some questions regarding the lesson or random questions that are popping from their heads. Asking productive questions to children will push them to think about creative solutions to help them overcome the problems or doubts that they have.
You need to be careful not to judge the children’s response and to make sure productive questions that you ask do not have only one (1) answer but have a lot of range responses. By doing this, you are guiding the children to do deeper thinking about their ideas.
8. Facilitate Discussions
As parents and teachers, it is understandable that sometimes we do not get back to our children when they ask some questions regarding the lesson or random questions that are popping from their heads. Asking productive questions to children will push them to think about creative solutions to help them overcome the problems or doubts that they have.
- Minimize factual questions which only need “Yes” or “No” as answers
- Accept children’s responses even if they are incorrect. Let them elaborate their ideas, explanations and reasons for giving the answer. Provide opportunity for other children to challenge their friends’ ideas.
