Harvard developed teaching technique used at Birmingham academic summer camp

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — We don’t often think about the importance of asking questions or teaching that skill to our children, but a study done at Harvard University shows asking questions helps with critical thinking skills and improves learning.

One summer camp in Birmingham uses Harvard’s research as its foundation while teaching elementary students.

“People who know a lot about children know that little kids ask a lot of questions, but the research says that once they get to school, they often stop asking questions and teachers ask more questions than students,” said Amelia Spencer, one of the co-directors of Use Your Noodle.

“There’s a Question Formulation Technique that comes out of Harvard University, the Right Question Institute, that says if you teach children how to ask questions and how to get to their level of engagement, that they will be more interested, more engaged and learn more, and also get literacy components that they wouldn’t get otherwise,” Spencer said.

Learning to ask a good question is skill that can bring about many other benefits.

“They have more of a sense of agency and autonomy about pursuing what interests them,” Use Your Noodle co-director Cora Causey said.

Use Your Noodle has been using QFT for the last three years. Though the camp is just a three-week intensive, the directors say the results speak for itself.

“The first year, the children’s wonderment questions, not the basic questions but the wonderment questions, increased 600%. Last year, it increased 480%,” Spencer said. “What we know is that these kids are getting engaged and learning beyond what a typical day at a school would be.”

“The numbers matter but what matters most to us is we see kids, we see their eyes lighting up, we see them asking questions on their own outside of the specific instruction time,” said Causey.

Because the camp is child centered and curiosity driven, teachers are able to get creative in the classrooms.

“In schools nowadays, it’s become more teacher-led, like teachers are asking the questions and teachers being the ‘source’ of information,” Use Your Noodle teacher Kristin Williams said. “If we can empower kids to ask questions and find the information for themselves, they’ll see that we also have to find answers and we have to research just like they could.”

Williams has been teaching for six and a half years. She’s also taught at Use Your Noodle since the camp began. She has been so impressed by QFT, it’s now something she implements into her classroom year-round.

“From the beginning of the year, they’re usually leaning on me a little bit more and they’re like ‘Ms. Kristin, Ms. Williams, can I do this?’ or ‘should I do this?’ and ‘how do I do this?’ but then by the end of the year, I find that they don’t ask me as many ‘can you help me?’, it’s more of like ‘can I use this to do this?’” said Williams. “They’re better critical thinkers because they’re trying to problem solve so they’re trying to think outside the box.”

Parents are noticing the benefits to learning good question asking as much as teachers.

“They’re inquisitive about things such as the weather, latest events that are happening on television, and they want to know more about it,” said Wilbert Brewer, the grandfather of two students at Use Your Noodle. “So, we dive into that and it’s an opportunity to share, to feed information to them and also to sit back and get feedback from them to see if they’re actually comprehending what we’re talking about.”

“Summer as a parent is such a precious time, you know, I’ve always looked at life as I only have 18 summers with my kids and that we have to make really good decisions for what we choose to spend our time on in the summer,” said Madonna Nichols, who has a daughter and granddaughter at Use Your Noodle.

Use Your Noodle uses hands-on activities for learning, so students don’t even realize just how many skills they’re taking away at the end of camp.

“We have engineering here too, kind of, because we build things with our little blocks that we have and they’re really cool,” said Emma Brewer, a rising fourth grader.

For registration information and more details on Use Your Noodle, contact the Avondale Samaritan Place by emailing info@avonumc.net, calling (205) 868-3345 or visiting the website here.