# Another teacher’s experience

Transcript

Hindolo was beginning a new topic on plants and he decided to use the students’ own questions as a starting point for teaching the topic. He understood that good questioning was essential, but he liked the idea of the students raising the questions themselves. So, at the beginning of the first lesson, he put some pictures of plants on the class wall. He told the class they were going to learn about plants, how they grow and how important they are. He said he wanted the students to work in pairs and brainstorm as many questions as they could think of to ask about plants. Then he had a whole-class session where each pair contributed a question. He wrote many of the questions on the board, sometimes helping the students to refine their questions as he did it. Here is their list:

1. Why are plants usually green?
2. Why are some plants poisonous?
3. Why do some plants grow in the desert, but not others?
4. Do plants grow on the Moon?
5. Why do plants need water?
6. Why do we call some plants weeds?
7. How many plants are there in the world?
8. Is seaweed a plant?
9. Do all plants need water?
10. What makes some plants better to eat than others?
11. What is the difference between a plant and a herb?
12. Is it true that oil comes from plants?
13. Can you eat flowers?

Hindolo discussed with the students how they could create categories of questions. He asked them to think of some categories and, working as a class, this is what they came up with on the board.

The structure of plants | How plants grow | The differences between plants and other forms of life | What plants are used for

Hindolo could now use this categorisation table to help him plan future lessons on plants. He gave each group one of the five categories in the table to investigate and gave them some resources to help them. For example, he gave the group who were to investigate the structure of plants some samples of plants and reference books. These students produced a diagram of the main structure and features of a plant and shared it with the whole class and it was displayed in the classroom during the topic. For the other questions, the students collected plants, tried to grow plants or used reference material.

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