'The Five Ws' photo (c) 2007, Emily Moe - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/

MindShift has published an absolutely great post titled Why It’s Imperative to Teach Students How to Question as the Ultimate Survival Skill, written by Warren Berger.

My colleagues and I were just discussing different strategies to help students value the importance of asking thoughtful questions — we’re teaching lessons on the difference between literal and interpretative questions now (I’ve written about those lessons in The NY Times).

This post and writing prompt will be a great addition to that lesson, and to the other ideas I’ve written about in my books and in The Best Posts & Articles About Asking Good Questions.

Here’s the writing prompt students will be responding to after they’ve read the MindShift post:

What is Warren Berger saying about the importance of learning how to ask good questions? Do you agree with his position? To support your opinion you may use examples from your own experiences, your observations of others, and anything that you have read, including this essay.

I’ll be adding this post to My Best Posts On Writing Instruction, where I’ve been collecting various writing prompts.