Teachers of history and social studies on all grade levels know they want students to do more than just memorize facts; they want students to practice thinking about history as well. This is a valuable and important goal. Humans remember what we think about, so actually engaging intellectually with history will help students to remember… Read more »
The Four Question Method wasn’t explicitly designed to teach civics, but we think it does a really good job of it. In this post I’ll explain why teaching Question Two, “What were they thinking?” helps students to develop a critical civic disposition: listening to people who we expect to disagree with. FOUR QUESTION STRUCTURE The… Read more »
Last week, Jon wrote about Graham Delano, an awesome young teacher at Nashville Classical Charter School. Graham’s students had learned a story, but didn’t know how to begin retelling it. Graham called them back and identified the actors in their story — Native Americans, led by Chief Joseph, and the American military. That prompt allowed… Read more »
If 4QM Teaching had a t-shirt it would say “Story First!” on the front (and “What’s the Question?” on the back). That’s because we know that students can’t do any serious thinking about history until they have answered Question One, which is “What happened?” Good answers to Question One come in the form of a… Read more »
One of the most fun things about attending this year’s National Council for the Social Studies annual conference was meeting teachers from around the country who have been using the Four Question Method. They gave us great validation (a teacher from San Francisco stopped by our booth to enthuse, “This stuff works!”), and asked great… Read more »
The Four Question Method was originally designed to solve a common problem for history teachers: How do we wrestle all of our mandated content into manageable and meaningful chunks that our students can understand? The solution is the six box storyboard that we use for unit planning. Fitting the “story of the unit,” whether it’s… Read more »
This post is by guest author Sarah Bassett. Ms. Bassett will graduate in May 2023 from the University of Vermont as a certified teacher in grades K-3, and in this post she describes how the Four Question Method can help teachers talk about tough topics with students in the early grades. As someone who is… Read more »
Over the past few years there has been increasing attention paid to “the science of reading.” A few journalists (including our friend and advisor Natalie Wexler) have been pointing out that too many American kids don’t learn to read or don’t learn to read well, because too many elementary schools ignore what science has proven… Read more »
We just completed a 4QM curriculum pilot at Nashville Classical Charter School. Nashville Classical uses Core Knowledge curriculum in the elementary grades. They give it high marks in K-2, where history is integrated into a top quality literacy curriculum. In upper elementary, grades 3-5, the CK materials they have are good, but not great. They… Read more »
Jon and I got invited to present at a Learning and the Brain conference in New York last weekend. Before we presented, we got to hear a series of talks by psychologists and neuroscientists. I have to say, it made me nervous. We figured out the Four Question Method by teaching real students ourselves and… Read more »