"Look It Up"

When I became an avid reader in middle school, I used to ask my father what a word meant. Every time he answered my question with the same response, "Look it up." Undeterred by his response, I would always go look the word up in the dictionary. After a while, I stopped asking and automatically looked up the words I didn't understand in whatever I read. I credit that simple statement for helping me develop a thirst for finding answers. To this day, when I wonder about a topic, an idea or a definition I hear a still voice in my head that says, "Look it up."

As a future teacher, I hear a lot about encouraging students to love learning. The simple question, "Where can we look to find the answer?" can foster the inquisitiveness that teachers want to see in their students. With the never-ending amount of information being thrown at students, it would be refreshing to learn how to navigate through it to find what's of most value to them. Asking such a simple question makes the students start to brainstorm all the places they can find information, revealing to them that there are options. Teachers can model for their students how to find information and why some resources are better than others.The hope is that this practice will extend beyond the classroom and encourage our students to find answers and become masters of their own knowledge.