Reflection on Reading II

Students like to ask questions. They are keen to find out what they want to know. However, the minds and perceptions of students are narrowed and limited by several reasons in pursuing in their studying. A simple example is that as students try to come up with so-called good questions, they neglect the possibilities of what are considered as stupid questions may lead them into an investigation to an enlightening result. The "what-if-not" strategy then is here to help students free their tied-up minds. The idea is to develop the critical thinking ability in students that they can produce a more thorough and comprehensive perspective of a subject matter. Students can then have the whole image of what they are learning and to further develop it, find the connection among different subject matters and create a board spectrum of view where knowledge are intertwined altogether. To implement this strategy into our teaching, teachers have to, before the students, obtain the thorough views of subject matter, know all the question levels where they can lead the students on step by step to explore more into the subject and expand the minds of these students. I think its definitely important to let students know that there are no stupid questions and they need to learn to "leave them(questions) in" so that they can come back and examine them later once they have connected the topic to another and come to realize that these questions can in fact help them to a boarder realization of knowledge which may appear in an unconscious level sometimes. Then, teachers can help students to think more and more and later students can think and explore independently in their interested fields. I think couple limitations of this strategy are that it is abused by students who are too smart to realize this is to help them progress in their studying rather than using to backfire teachers, and sometimes by teachers who think that life is easy just by questioning their students and do not care whether these questions are "acceptable" or over-whelming to students. Too many questionings and sometimes too many "meaningless" questions really depress students with their interests in studying and can result in a fixed minded students after all.