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Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities has 50 remote-ready activities, which work for either your classroom or remote teaching.
I'm guilty
No, you make perfect sense and I have done just as you claim - to try to engage students. Mostly I have received a deafening silence and thought to myself, "these students are so dis-engaged". But, as I have begun to ask real question, open-ended questions, I realized that students are not zombies but were only bored of my inane questions. Now, you make me see another alternative and that is, student may be hearing my question as "Charlie Brown Teacher Talk"... you, know, bla, bla, bla. If you have no experience with what I'm asking then of course I'm going to get silence in return.
You make an excellent case for starting with what students already know.
Do you think that will help?