I’m giving a workshop on the use of clickers in K12 classrooms next week.  I need your help!  The research says that teachers focus too much on the surface features of “example” questions that you give them.  If they’re a science teacher, they tune out during a literature question.  If they’re a history teacher, the science question doesn’t mean anything to them.  They can’t abstract out the central features of that question to see how it might relate to their subject.

So, I want to come up with a question (or two) that are not specific to any discipline.  I need a multiple choice question, that’s hard to answer and requires discussion with your neighbors, and would interest any average American adult.  I was thinking something with nutrition or health…. or maybe something puzzle-like, like the Monty Hall problem (though that’s a little mathy).  My colleague has a nice question about “how many liters of Scotch are stored in Scotland” which you actually *can* answer by making a few estimations — but I kind of like the idea of using a question that has a right answer, since that more matches how teachers would use it in the classroom.

I could also use some examples of good clicker questions from non-science areas, and any K12 question banks that people have.

Thanks!

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