Pupils working on their philosophical questions during a P4C session
I’m often asked How do you get them better at asking philosophical questions? Here are some approaches you can use to help pupils develop their skills:
Starting a question
Provide question stems. You could use my question stems for P4C resource.
Knowing the difference between philosophical and non-philosophical questions
Spend some time sorting questions into categories, so that they realise there are different types. You could give them the labels, or they could invent labels for different types of questions. For example, they could sort questions into big questions and little questions, or philosophical and non-philosophical.
I’ve provided a list of example philosophical and non-philosophical questions here, in my P4C Question Sorting Challenge.
For a more sophisticated way to look at question types, use a Question Quadrant (see Question Quadrant resource).
Model philosophical questions. (If you’re still building your own awareness, start by trying the sorting activities yourself.)
Question Sorting Challenge
