When I was writing my education book Beautiful Questions in the Classroom, one of the issues I focused on is: How might we begin to change student attitudes toward questioning?
Many students may not appreciate that there are benefits to asking questions; they tend to see the downside more. They worry about asking the “wrong” question and appearing to be foolish. And they figure there’s no real reward for asking a question—because usually in school, only answers are rewarded. That’s why I think educators should try to build up students’ understanding and appreciation of the value of questioning—what it can do for those students, and for the world around them. 
With that in mind, I created a classroom poster that frames questioning as a set of “superpowers” that can help you explore, think like a ninja, discover new possibilities, create cool new things, and maybe even change the world.
These are all real-life powers of questioning that I regularly discuss in my work (the only difference here is that I’m injecting a bit of superhero flavor). For example, when I talk about the superpowers of “solving problems,” “creating new things,” and “changing the world,” that comes straight out of my research showing that questioning is often a starting point of innovation. The “digging deep” superpower is another way of talking about critical thinking; it’s about kids being able to question what they’re told and figure out for themselves what’s true and what matters.
The poster is intended for teachers, but there’s no reason parents can’t also talk about questioning this way with their kids. All of us need to somehow “make questioning cool”—so that young people are more inclined to do it regularly and habitually.
If you’d like to order the downloadable poster, see the download links below. But first: A little video about how questioning can change the world (click the 
icon in the video controls to watch in 1090 HD):
Download an 8.5 x 11-inch pdf which can be printed on a regular inkjet printer 8 Questioning Superpowers 8.5×11 in
Download a 11 x 17-inch pdf which can be printed on tabloid-sized paper 8 Questioning Superpowers 11×17 in
Want a bigger poster to hang on your wall?
A larger-scale poster can be ordered from Zazzle.com. The art is created for their “medium” size poster, 24 x 36 inches, but you can order other size posters on Zazzle as well. Check it out at Zazzle.com »
