You could start off by overtly letting the kids know that "guessing the password" is how their success in school is measured and you're not going to be able to change that reality, but you could introduce "alternative" ways of thinking.
How about a game where each student writes down their answer to a passwordy type question and scores a point for every other student with the same answer. Lowest score wins. But they have to justify their answer.
If a teacher asks the question: "Who discovered America?" The password is: "Christopher Columbus"
But there are many more answers that are also valid responses. ( Native Americans, Rodrigo de Triana, the Norse, Vespucci, a US Founding Father, etc) that are mostly based on what the words "discover" or "America" means.
There is a problem with that: It assumes multiple valid responses and deals too much with what 'discover' or 'america' means. It wouldn't work for the 'Why is this steel plate hotter on the side away from the fire' question.
Hermenueutics-like games are risky since I think they teach contrarianness, thinking up unique-non obvious answers w/o regard to correctness. They teach the kind of reason that is rightly accused of being able to argue for atrocities.
I think that's a kind of terrible lesson.
It might work well to come up with a whole bunch of question...
As a teacher, I wonder if it is possible to instill this skill into students the skills of rationality and critical thinking. I teach the third grade, and it is not immediately apparent how to apply this with my own class.
The problems I foresee are as follows:
In the sequences, it is suggested teachers should drill into students words don't count, only anticipation-controllers. How practical is this for an elementary school level? Also appreciated would be any ideas or experiences on how to do this, or how to combat the above problems. Hearing from other teachers would be excellent especially.