Middle School Students Use QFT for Project-Based Learning

Last fall, a Sanford professional development grant enabled Max and Scott to enroll in the Harvard Graduate School of Education online course “Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions: Best Practices in the Question Formulation Technique.” The QFT process is guided by six clearly outlined steps, which are explained in the book Make Just One Change by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana of the Right Question Institute. The authors state that the formulation of one’s own questions is “the single most essential skill for learning,” and they think it should be taught to all students.

Max explained: "While both Scott and I were using QFT with some degree of success in our individual classes, we decided it would be an excellent approach to an interdisciplinary 7/8 grade project. Sarah Cushing, also a 7/8 grade instructor, embraced the idea of QFT and led a session with our students. It actually grew to become something that the entire team of seventh and eighth grade teachers supported by ensuring that the students followed the prescriptive QFT protocol."

For the project, students had to brainstorm a global issue that effects the local community, whether it be Sanford, Hockessin, or northern Delaware. Max elaborated: "The QFT allowed students to create questions to aid in their research on their chosen issue and determine possible solutions. QFT proved to be the perfect tool for helping students to begin the research process, and they responded well to it." Seventh graders Zoey DeVinney and Pranali Viswanathan shared: "QFT helped us focus on the questions that we had to research and the ones that we didn’t." Max added: "This type of categorizing of the brainstormed questions is just what QFT teaches the students to do."

QFT gives students more of a voice in their learning by empowering them to not only be the ones who answer questions, but also be involved in creating the questions. Christian Cauley '24 commented: “I thought it [QFT] was a great and intuitive method to get groupmates to discuss the topic and then formed a detailed two-part question. I thought by having us write down our questions, we could see them and then improve upon them.”

Christian’s remarks support some of the goals of QFT—to shift the teacher’s role to facilitator and empower the students to be more actively involved and resourceful in their projects. Students learn the advantages and disadvantages of open-ended and close-ended questions and when is the best time to employ each of them. With this enhanced engagement in their learning, students are actually practicing and developing divergent, convergent, and meta-cognitive thinking.

Max reflected: "We are using QFT with our students as a result of Sanford’s support for professional development. It is exciting for us to see that our work outside of the classroom to learn new approaches is having a positive and direct impact on our students’ learning."

The professional development will continue, as members of the faculty will be taking another Harvard Graduate School of Education course entitled "Creating Cultures of Thinking." Scott shared: "We are very excited to have members of all three divisions. From the Lower School, we have Sue Bachtle, Sarah Cushing from the Middle School, and Anna Littlefield representing the Upper School. We are thrilled that Sanford is supporting us in our efforts to continue to improve our curriculums and provide the best experience for our students. The course is rooted in facilitating collaboration, communication, and doing so in a way that the group's collective as well as individual thinking is valued, visible, and actively promoted.”

For more information about QFT, download the Experiencing the Question Formulation Technique guide.