Any primary teachers?

[guccigirl666]

What do you do if a student asks you something you don't know? Do you advise they find out for themselves (depending on their age?). For instance a pupil recently asked me "if you open your eyes in space, does it hurt like when you open them under water?". What would you say to that?!

Well, it depends on the topic. I'm not a primary teacher (I was one until recently and now I work with children in secondary and primary who either have speech problems or who can't speak English/have it as a second language).

If I didn't know the answer, then what I used to do as a primary teacher was to get him to speak up and ask it to the class. Get a few hands being raised, and them trying to answer. Then talk about possibilities (for instance, with this, it might be to do with the pressure, which can be strong under water) and then possibly set a quick thing like 'that's a very interesting question, well done! How about you try and find out tonight, and everyone who writes down the answer and brings it back tomorrow can get a sticker/point/chocolate/other reward.' Quick, easy, not too long and not actual homework, shouldn't take up the lesson, and doesn't mean you have to guess.

I would say "what a good question ... I wonder where we could find the answer because I don't know " and then help the child research

What mrz says.

(Short anecdote: I knew ds was at a great primary school when I overheard his reception teacher saying to the Head: 'Is it OK that my planning went out of the window this morning when child A told the class he'd been on a canal boat and the other children didn't know what one was...so we've done all morning about canals?' and the Head answered: 'What I don't know, etc')

Thank you for your replies, this is very useful!

If you opened your eyes in space, without a helmet, your eyes would pop out. Tell that to the kids!

Generally, I say I don't know but I'd be interested to find out. Some children find it hard to believe that I don't know everything. I think it's wrong to pretend to be perfect.

YY to what mrz said. I had this last year and said 'let's both look it up tonight and we can see what we found out in the morning' he was a v clever boy!

This reminds me of a line in Tim Minchin's song 'When I grow up' (Matilda the musical)...

"when I grow up, I will be smart enough to answer all the questions that you need to know the answers to before you're grown up...."

I generally go with all the suggestions that have already been made - have a class discussion, create a list of all the hypotheses we come up with as a class, investigate it that day, ask children to find out about it at home etc. etc. It still amazes me that so many children are firm in their belief that teachers (primary ones at any rate) know everything.

My son told me that he thought teachers can't be very clever as they have to use the answer book to mark the maths work. I'm a teacher.

I told him that perhaps he had got it wrong and that teachers were probably very clever to use the answer book. That way they didn't have to do the work.

I tell them when I don't know but usually look it up with them to see if we can find the answer. We did this other day when we were talking about Storm Sandy. We then found out about the Beaufort scale, which led to them (and me) finding about another scale that categorises hurricanes. This all started because we were doing reading comprehension and the poem was talking about Force 6 winds.

The space helmet is cheating, because it doesn't hurt underwater if you've got goggles on either. The question is very clever.