19th Century Singapore

A teacher Ellie broached the topic of migration in 19th century Singapore to her students by utilising their inquiries about the syllabus content.

She initially got each student to list 5 questions they had regarding chapters 3 and 4 of the history textbook. From the list of questions that resulted, she selected the question "Was Singapore an attractive option for the poorer immigrants to come during the 19th century? Why?" to be the overarching inquiry question for the topic, and posted it on a KF view '1D class question' (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. KF view '1D class question'.

Students were then split into groups of 5 and tasked with generating sub-questions that could help them better understand this broad inquiry question. Following this, Ellie instructed students to read and comment on other groups' work, and to refine their own work based on their classmates' comments.

In this manner, Ellie used students' own questions and ideas to prompt their curiosity in the topic and sustain their engagement in learning.