Driving Questions Boards in Stile

The Driving Questions Board is an instructional tool used to facilitate students' questions, organise them and connect them to their learning. You'll notice that Driving Questions Boards feature in a number of our newest units, including The Nervous System and Waves. This article is your go-to guide for using a Driving Questions Board with your students.

What is a Driving Questions Board?

A Driving Questions Board is a visible record of questions generated by students. These questions are based around the unit's Guiding Question, which is crafted to build curiosity and drive learning . In The Nervous System, the Guiding Question is "How can your gut influence your mood?" It appears as a banner image in lessons throughout the unit to prompt students to connect their learning back to this question.

Why use a Driving Questions Board?

The Driving Questions Board supports you to facilitate a coherent learning experience and connect students' learning across lessons. The board allows students to link the questions they have asked to the information they have learned and their growing understanding of the unit's phenomena.

Working with students in this fashion will give them a strong sense that their questions are driving the learning in the unit, which increases their engagement and motivation.

The process of questioning, returning to and reflecting on these questions supports students' metacognition. Each time they revisit their questions, they consider how their thinking has changed and what they have learned.

How do I create a Driving Questions Board?

Context is included within each unit to help you weave the creation of a Driving Questions Board into the learning experience. For all units, creating the board involves a process of students recording their questions and displaying them. If all questions are collected into one central location, there is a curation process to select a representative sample that captures everyone's ideas. Questions will then usually be grouped by theme.

For step-by-step guidance on this process, check out our Driving Questions Board template lesson in the Teacher Resources unit. Visit stileapp.com/go/dqbtemplate

What does it look like?

Your Driving Questions Board will look different depending on your classroom and circumstances. Below are some ideas that might help you decide how to create yours.

If your class is always held in the same room, you might consider:

• Using non-permanent glass markers on a large window to record student questions
• Using post-it notes to record student questions and sticking these to a window or wall (be sure to test out the stickiness of your post-it notes first!)
• Using index cards for students to record their questions and pin these to the wall

If your class moves between classrooms, your Driving Questions Board will need to be portable. You might consider:

• Using coloured markers on large pieces of paper for students to record their questions. These pages can be carried with you between classrooms
• Using post-it notes for students to record their questions, and sticking these to large pieces of paper that can be moved between classrooms

How do I use it with students?

Once you've set up your board, you'll be prompted to return to it throughout the unit to encourage students to review their questions, consider what they've learned and whether they can now answer any of their wonderings. They'll also formulate new questions as they do this.

We encourage you to refer to the board as you start and complete lesson activities to give students an opportunity to make connections between their questions and their learning.

Give it a go! And let us know how you get on, we'd love to hear about it. You can reach me at alexandra.russell@stileeducation.com