1. QUESTIONS
QUALITY

2. There are two ways to ask quality questions:
Higher Order Thinking Questions
Text Dependent Questions
HOT Questions
A main goal of educators today is to teach students the skills they need to be critical thinkers.  Instead of simply memorizing facts and ideas, children need to engage in higher levels of thinking to reach their fullest potential.  Practicing Higher Order Thinking (HOT) skills outside of school will give kids and teens the tools that they need to understand, infer, connect, categorize, synthesize, evaluate, and apply the information they know to find solutions to new and existing problems.
Text-dependent questions are those that can only be answered by referring back to the text being read.
 The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) require students to “read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it.” They must also cite pertinent evidence from the text when responding orally or when writing an answer to questions about the text. Students can no longer rely solely on prior knowledge or personal experience.

4. Q-Chart
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4

5. How to use it:
Teacher Directed- Copy the Q-chart onto an overhead or chart. As you and the class create questions, place a small sticky note over the appropriate quadrant. This will help insure you are asking multiple types of questions.
Student Directed - Have the children use this in their Reciprocal Teaching groups or during Partner Reading. They could make it like a tic-tac-toe game, or play four corners type of activity. The possibilities are endless.

7. What do you think about these questions?
After reading Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address”
Why did the North fight the civil war?
Have you ever been to a funeral or gravesite?
Lincoln says that the nation is dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal.” Why is equality an important value to promote?

8. Let’s see why these questions are not HOT
After reading Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address”
Why did the North fight the civil war?
Have you ever been to a funeral or gravesite?
Lincoln says that the nation is dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal.” Why is equality an important value to promote?
The overarching problem with these questions is
they require no familiarity at all with Lincoln’s speech in order to answer them
they take students away from considering the actual point Lincoln is making.
they seek to elicit a personal or general response that relies on individual experience and opinion
Personal knowledge or prior knowledge gets in the middle of the information of the text

9. Non-Examples and Examples
Not Text-Dependent
Text-Dependent
What makes Casey’s experiences at bat humorous?
What can you infer from King’s letter about the letter that he received?
“The Gettysburg Address” mentions the year According to Lincoln’s speech, why is this year significant to the events described in the speech?
In “Casey at the Bat,” Casey strikes out. Describe a time when you failed at something.
In “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr. King discusses nonviolent protest. Discuss, in writing, a time when you wanted to fight against something that you felt was unfair.
In “The Gettysburg Address” Lincoln says the nation is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Why is equality an important value to promote?
Text-dependent questions require students to pay attention to the text at hand and to draw evidence from that text.
What does this look like in the classroom?
Teachers insist that classroom experiences stay deeply connected to the text on the page and that students develop habits for making evidentiary argument both in conversation, as well as in writing, to assess comprehension of a text.
Students have rich and rigorous conversations and develop writing that is dependent on a common text.

10. From Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” Why does the narrator kill the old man?
Answer: “The eye motivated him to kill the man.”
Evidence from text: “I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture -- a pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me my blood ran cold, and so by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever. ”

11. From Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” What would motivate the narrator kill the old man?
Answer: “Because the eye resembled one of a vulture and that scared him so bad. Vultures are known for killing weak animals.”
Evidence from text: “I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture -- a pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me my blood ran cold, and so by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever. ”

12. Developing Text Dependent Questions to Promote Student Learning
1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text. 2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas. 3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text. 4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone. 5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole. 6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text 7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words. 8. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence. 9. Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.

13. Example:
Consider the following example to distinguish between memorization of facts and actually engaging in thoughtful ideas:
After reading a book about Martin Luther King or studying the Civil Rights era, you could choose to ask a child a simple question such as “Who is Martin Luther King, Jr.?”.  When answering this question, the child can simply provide facts that s/he has memorized.  Instead, to promote critical thinking skills, you might ask them “Why do you think that people view Martin Luther King, Jr. as a hero of the civil rights era?” to elicit a more well thought-out response that requires them to apply, connect, and synthesize the information they previously learned.

16. 30,000
The average number of questions teachers ask every school year.
The following slides have examples of close reading and text dependent questions:

17. Ain't I a Woman? Sojourner Truth
May 28-29, 1851
"Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think
that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women of the North, all talking about rights, the
white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over
ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or
over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at
my arm! I could have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could
head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man- when I
could get it- and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children,
and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief,
none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [Intellect, somebody
whispers] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negro's rights? If
my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me
have my little half measure-full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men,
'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ
come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all
alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!
And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.
Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say."
Ain't I a Woman? Sojourner Truth

18. Response
As a student, what knowledge and skills would you need to respond to this question?
As a teacher, what information could you gather about student knowledge and skills from their responses to this question?
#1. Not an open-ended, text-dependent question:
How many children did Sojourner Truth have and what happened to them?
Truth had thirteen children and most of them were sold into slavery.
How to find the answer in the text
Whether or not they are able to pull an answer out of a specific part of the text
#2: Open-ended, text-dependent question:
What moment do you find most compelling in advancing the speaker’s argument? Explain using evidence from the text.
The moment that is the most compelling in advancing Sojourner Truth’s argument, that men and women are equal, occurs in paragraph 2. In this part of the text, she details the various tasks she has done as a woman without help from a man. Truth explains many things she has done that men say women cannot do. After each item she asks, “And ain’t I a woman?,” emphasizing that she is a woman and was able to accomplish what many men do everyday and have never done, like birth children.
Determine Sojourner Truth’s argument
Identify a moment that advances Sojourner’s argument
Explain the moment the student found the most compelling
Supply evidence to support that this moment was the most compelling
Understand an author’s argument
Identify significant moments in a text and select one that is “most” compelling
Supply evidence from the text that advances their opinion about the most compelling moment

19. The Purpose of Education by Martin Luther King Jr.
The Purpose Of Education by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Morehouse College Student Paper, The Maroon Tiger, in 1947
As I engage in the so-called "bull sessions" around and about the school, I too often find that most college men have a misconception of the purpose of education. Most of the "brethren" think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so that they can forever trample over the masses. Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end. It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life. Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction. The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals. The late Eugene Talmadge, in my opinion, possessed one of the better minds of Georgia, or even America. Moreover, he wore the Phi Beta Kappa key. By all measuring rods, Mr. Talmadge could think critically and intensively; yet he contends that I am an inferior being. Are those the types of men we call educated? We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living. If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, "brethren!" Be careful, teachers!
The Purpose of Education by Martin Luther King Jr.

20. Response
As a student, what knowledge and skills would you need to respond to this question ?
As a teacher, what information could you gather about student knowledge and skills from their responses to this question
#1. Not an open-ended, text-dependent question:
How does Dr. King define the function of education in the 2nd paragraph?
Dr. King thinks education serves the functions of utility and culture.
How to find the answer in the text
Whether or not they are able to pull a straightforward answer out the text
#2: Open-ended, text-dependent question:
Select and explain the moment in the text that reveals the most about Dr. King’s idea of education.
The moment in the text that reveals the most about Dr. King’s idea of education is when he says “Intelligence plus character – that is the true goal of education.” Dr. King’s main point in this speech is that education should not just be about getting smarter, but also about becoming a moral person. This quote summarizes his main point by clearly stating what he thinks the purpose of education is.
Be able to comprehend the entire text
Infer and summarize Dr. King’s idea of education
Evaluate which moment in the text best illustrates his idea of education
Explain the connection between the moment in the text and his idea of education
How deeply he/she comprehends the main point of the text

21. Dice Game- Give the children a dice(cube) with the words from the left column printed on it. Also, give them a dice (cube) with words from the top column printed on it. The children have to roll the two dice and create a question from the words they rolled. You could tie this approach into any of the games listed above.
Inferencing - Shade in the lower right quadrants (from When would… to Why might…) Ask the children to create 3 questions from these quadrants only. Next, have the children answer their (or a partners) questions using details from the story to support their answers.
Readers Response Journals- Students use the chart to create questions they record in their reader’s response journals.
Ideas for a Q-Chart