Questions and problems

Progressive brainstorming

A structure where the student pairs or student groups gradually build on the material that other pairs or groups have created. It can be about the same question or different questions. The material can be built in the form of a mind map, lists, tables, etc. The work can also be carried out on a digital tool. Example: The students work in five groups. Each group has a marker pen in its own color. The teacher has in advance on e.g. five flipchart sheets written five statements/parts of the world/questions/... Each group starts at a piece of paper and writes down with its color everything that the group can think of. On signal, the groups move clockwise to the next paper and fill in information that is not yet on the paper with their color. When all groups have filled in the information at all five stations, the class gathers to go through the material. The collected material forms a good basis for further work on the theme and the teacher has gained a good insight into the students' thoughts and prior knowledge.

Why-Why-Why chain

The purpose of the tool is that the student

• is forced to reflect on background factors to a question/phenomenon

• sees connections between the local and the global

• is challenged to think about his own assumptions and preconceptions

Implementation: The student(s) are faced with a question (Ex. Why do people have to leave their home country?). This question is written on the far left of a large sheet of paper. The student/student group thinks of at least two answers to the question and writes them down one below the other in the column to the right of the starting question. (Ex. There is war in the home country, In the home country there is too little food ...). Time for new Why? Why is there war .., Why is there too little food in different countries? The students again write down their different answers in the following column on the right. Possibly, the chain can still get one more column. The initial question has now led to several different alternative answers that are increasingly concrete and often more local. Possibly, students can discover causes that could be remedied in some way. The younger the students, the more important it is that the starting question is very concrete. The starting question may well be about problems in the local environment. Young students probably also need a simplified structure template on the paper sheet to facilitate working with the tool.

I description of the tool (Stride)

Why-why-why chain - an activity sheet (Oxfam)

Why-why-why chain explained in a video (WOSDEC)