Questions to ask about science, nature and school subjects

How did empire reshape what colonies grew, mined and sold?

Land that had fed its farmers was turned over to a single export such as cotton, rubber, cocoa, sugar, tea or peanuts, and railways ran from the mine or plantation to the port, seldom between towns. Hand out a colonial railway map and ask what it was built to move. Keep the map, because it is evidence again when you reach the Legacy group.

From: Questions to Ask About Imperialism

What are the phases in order, and what single event defines each one?

Reciting names is not the skill being tested; matching one defining event to each is. Chromosomes condensing, the nuclear envelope breaking down, alignment at the equator, sister chromatids separating, and nuclei re-forming give you five checkpoints you can identify from a diagram.

From: Questions to Ask About Mitosis

What does Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series show, and what does it leave to the captions?

Lawrence, the son of migrants, painted sixty small panels in 1940 and 1941 from library research and from what he had heard growing up in Harlem. The pictures are flat and spare, and the captions carry the facts. Hand each student one panel to describe before reading its caption, then compare the two.

From: Questions to Ask About the Great Migration

Have you ever been frightened outdoors?

Weather that turned, a wrong turn after dark, water moving faster than it looked. These stories are more revealing than any account of a pleasant walk, and they tell you how much risk this person is willing to be near.

From: Questions to Ask About Nature

How does one set of DNA instructions produce hundreds of different cell types?

This is the question that separates memorizing organelles from understanding cells. The answer is about which genes are switched on rather than which genes are present, and the fact that every cell type shares one genome is the whole point.

From: Questions to Ask About Cells

Who was Coretta Scott King, and what was her part in the work?

She was a trained singer studying at a Boston conservatory when they met, and had been politically active since college. She raised four children under constant threat, spoke and raised money for the movement, and after 1968 spent decades building the King Center and campaigning for the holiday.

From: Questions to Ask About Martin Luther King