1. Q uality uestioning Materials adapted from QUILT curriculum:
Henrico County
Public Schools
Welcome to the Quality Questioning Professional Development Workshop. You are participating in a workshop designed to address a Henrico county initiative. We have adapted the QUILT curriculum to address the needs of the Henrico division and we call our initiative Quality Questioning.
This presentation provides a brief overview of a piece of the Quality Questioning curriculum: the “Educative question”. We are not referring to questions that merely fill class time—that are lifted from available sources or developed in an impromptu manner.  We are speaking now of the educative question introduced earlier.
J.T Dillon claims that educative questions “advance pedagogical purposes, classroom processes, and educational ends.  For example, they facilitate student thinking and enhance class participation.”
Materials adapted from QUILT curriculum:
Questioning and Understanding to Improve Learning and Thinking

2. Focus Questions:
What are the characteristics of an “educative question”?
How does a discussion question differ from a recitation question?
What can be considered when determining the content focus of a question?
J.T.Dillon claims that there are differences between an educative question and an every day question. Today we will define the characteristics of an educative question as a means to helping us determine the differences between the two. We will also look at the work of Wiggins and McTighe, and Lelia Christenbury for frameworks to consider when determining the content focus of a question.

3. Find it Shape it Deliver it
As previously stated, Dillon distinguishes between educative questions and everyday questions, stating that the real difference lies in the “greatness of care” it takes to make a question an educative one.  Dillon further states that an educative question “does not occur to our mind, we must find it.  It does not take on a shape, we must give it form.  It does not present itself, we must deliver it.  We prepare a question to be educative.  We conceive it, formulate it, and pose it.  To conceive an educative question requires thought, to formulate it requires labor, and to pose it, tact.”  
Educative questions are difficult to create and worth the effort.
You need to find it, shape it, deliver it -- much like how someone envisions a work of art, molds it and exhibits it.
An educative question is:
Content Focused
Purposeful
Written at a specific cognitive level
Clearly worded
Pottery wheel:

4. Content Focus Content Focused
A critical task associated with question preparation is the determination of the content focus, or the aspects of the subject area that are important for students to know, understand, and use. In other words - what’s worth teaching?
How do you determine content focus for your questions?
Note: As facilitator, you may wish to pose this question to participants and record their responses on flip chart paper. Or you may simply wish to quickly review some of the more common points of reference for content focus, including national, state, and local standards; state courses of study; local curriculum guides; blueprints for standardized tests; textbook questions; teachers’ manuals accompanying textbooks; personal values, experiences, and preferences; students’ known interests and aspirations, etc.

5. Backward Design Worth being familiar with Important to know and do
“Enduring”
understanding
p. 43.
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe introduced a framework for thinking about “what’s worth teaching” in their book Understanding by Design. In the book they advocate what they call a backward design process. Backward design consists of three stages, the first of which is “identifying the desired results”—what students should know, understand, and be able to do. In this stage, they suggest that educators prioritize the content contained within our curricula, given that there is always more content than can be reasonably addressed.
First, out of all possible content in a given subject area, teachers should identify that body of knowledge that is “worth being familiar with.” This is the information that teachers present to students because it is a part of our shared cultural experience. E. D. Hirsh’s work Cultural Literacy comes to mind when one thinks of this category of knowledge.
Note to facilitator: Questions addressing knowledge at this level will most likely be asked at the recall or comprehension levels of the Bloom Taxonomy.
The second layer of knowledge is comprised of the facts, concepts, and principles that students need to know and the skills (processes, strategies, and methods) that they should master or be able to use proficiently. Wiggins and McTighe suggest that we can think about this subset as the “prerequisite knowledge and skills needed by students for them to successfully accomplish key performances” (Understanding by Design, p. 10). Students need to master this knowledge in order to meet established standards, perform at an established level of proficiency on a standardized test or assessment, or, more importantly, function successfully as a member of society.
Note to facilitator: Questions addressing this content will probably engage students in using or applying knowledge.
The smallest ring in this graphic represents the “enduring” understandings that will anchor the course or unit within a course. These are the big ideas and important understandings that we want students to “get inside of” and retain after they’ve forgotten many of the details. This is the stuff of which essential questions are made.
Note to facilitator: Students will need to think deeply about knowledge for which they are developing an enduring understanding. That is, they may need to think at the higher levels of the Bloom Taxonomy, including analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

6. Filters for Understanding Pg 43
Wiggins and McTighe offer four criteria for selecting ideas and processes to teach to the level of enduring understanding:
To what extent does the idea, topic, or process represent a “big idea” having enduring value beyond the classroom? To what extent will a deep understanding of this idea enhance a student’s functioning in our democratic society and/or contribute to his quality of life? Examples of such big ideas by subject area might include language arts/literature—the struggle between good and evil; social studies—freedom and the rule of law; science—the ecological balance in our environment; mathematics—whole numbers; etc.
To what extent does the idea, topic, or process reside at the heart of the discipline? With this criterion the authors reference such processes as the scientific method, literary criticism, and historical analysis. This “filter” is connected with the idea of authentic learning—that students have opportunities to think like and do the work of scientists, historians, mathematicians, authors, and so on.
To what extent does the idea, topic, or process require uncoverage? Oftentimes students arrive in school with misconceptions regarding their world and the subjects they will study in school. For example, many children “learn” simplistic explanations for complex scientific concepts when they are young children, and they never unlearn them. In order to “uncover” materials, teachers must first find out what students think about these big ideas. A much-cited example from science is the principle of gravity.
To what extent does the idea, topic, or process offer potential for engaging students? All teachers know the value of connecting content to students’ personal interests and issues. For example, most students are interested in the concepts of personal freedom and independence. Similarly, many young children are intrigued by dinosaurs, which can engage them in thinking about environmental changes and their impact on living creatures.
for Understanding

7. Filters for Selecting Understandings•
Represent a big idea having enduring
value beyond the classroom
Reside at the heart of the discipline
(involve ‘doing’ the subject)
Require uncovering abstract or often misunderstood ideas
Offer potential for engaging students
“Enduring” understanding
Graphic of information from previous slide.

8. Christenbury Circles:
Content of
subject area
Other content matter
Individual
Pg 44.
Leila Christenbury approaches the selection of “powerful” content from a slightly different perspective. Christenbury, a language arts scholar, developed what is called the questioning circle. This strategy calls attention to the fact that students bring prior knowledge with them to any learning setting. Christenbury uses a Venn diagram to depict the relationship between (a) the content of the subject matter under study and (b) knowledge that students bring from other spheres of their lives.
Many classroom questions focus exclusively on the content of the subject area under study. For example, a history teacher oftentimes focuses on names, dates, events, and other historical trivia—without relating these to other events in a student’s life.
However, as this visual depicts, it is possible to help students connect or relate historical facts to other content areas. Note the area overlapping the two shaded circles. This suggests that there is value in connecting what students are studying in one subject area to content in other disciplines. For example, history teachers can connect to literature of the period or scientific inventions that affected social conventions.
The content under study can also be connected to the student’s life outside of school—to his or her personal life. Competition, conflict, and personal ambition are themes of history that are part of each individual’s human experience.
This graphic also depicts the potential for formulating questions at the intersection of the subject under study, the individual’s life outside of school, and other content areas. This intersection can offer the potential for formulating a truly powerful question—one that enables the learner to make multiple connections between the content being studied and his or her extant knowledge.

9. We will suggest that questions be prepared in recognition of the particular context in which they will be used, and we will differentiate between the contexts of recitation and discussion. Let’s take a minute to distinguish between these two instructional contexts. Again, we’ll turn to Dillon for instruction. In his work Questioning and Teaching: A Manual of Practice, Dillon ascribes the following three characteristics to recitation:
What is in question is not what the question is about. By this, Dillon means that teachers do not raise a question in recitation because they do not know the answer or because they are curious as to the student’s answer. Teachers have other reasons for asking questions for which they have the answer and presume (or at least hope) that students have the answers. What are some of these reasons?
Invite participants to respond here. They may reply that teachers ask questions to make sure that a given student knows the answer; to check on whether students did homework; to drill and practice; to review for a test, etc.
Answers are known before asking and confirmed after asking. In general, there is only one correct answer to a question raised in recitation, and the teacher has determined before the recitation what that answer is. Dillon says that this is true whether the question is factual or interpretive, simple or complex, etc.
The questioner reacts to the answer with an evaluation as to its correctness or incorrectness.
On the other hand, discussion sounds and feels a lot different from recitation.
First, in discussion, questions are open for discussion rather than closed for answer. Another way of saying this is that questions for discussion are truly open ended or divergent in nature. These questions invite students to think beyond and outside of the lines of the textbook or lecture notes. This does not mean that there are not parameters or boundaries for a discussion. To the contrary, discussants should agree upon the purpose of the discussion and should monitor themselves as they contribute to the resolution of the problem embodied in the question for discussion. Remember as part of the norms, students are monitoring themselves.
The second feature of a discussion is that the teacher is not the source of the answer. This is another way of saying that the role of the teacher during discussion is not to evaluate the correctness of student comments. Rather, the teacher who facilitates a true discussion usually becomes one of the discussants, often sitting down in a circle with students to symbolize her position as colearner with them.
Finally, discussion is characterized by an exchange of talk—a mix of statements and questions from both students and teachers. A good discussion grows out of a powerful question brought forth for community conversation. Although the teacher usually formulates the focusing question for discussions, students may be challenged to submit questions for discussion. If this is done, you will probably want to develop a rubric to help you and your class select from among the questions submitted.
A discussion usually begins with the teacher posing a question. You may want to post or project the question for student reflection prior to beginning the discussion. Once talk begins, students are free to introduce new questions, so long as they relate to the overall purpose of the discussion, and the teacher is free to make comments, to voice his or her points of view.

10. Purposeful: depends on recitation/discussion
How can you identify the purpose of a question?
First and foremost, the purpose is identified by reference to the instructional objectives to be served. The purposes of a recitation differ from those of a discussion.
You may want to engage participants in establishing the primary purposes of questions in recitation and in discussion. If so, assign each table group the task of brainstorming the purposes of questions in either (a) recitation or (b) discussion. Allocate three minutes; use a timer. At the end of the time, ask each of the recitation groups for one purpose, until all have been recorded on flip chart paper. Then ask for the purposes of discussion, continuing to record on flip chart paper. Be sure the purposes from the next two slides are among the responses given by participants—but there is no need to show the next two slides.
Rather than group involvement, you may prefer to present the more common purposes. If so, use the following two slides.

11. Recitation To review To assess what students what To engage students
To let the students know what the teacher thinks is important
To practice
If you ask participants to brainstorm the purpose of questions, you will probably record their responses on a flip chart. In that event, you could skip this slide and the next. Alternatively, you could show this slide as a summary of some of their comments related to recitation.
Here are some of the most common reasons that teachers pose questions in the context of recitation:
to review content
to assess what students know
to let students know what the teacher thinks is important (cueing students to essential information)
to engage students (especially with cooperative learning response formats)
to drill and practice

12. Discussion To promote thinking To hear diverse points of view
To help students work through their own understanding of the subject
To learn to listen to others
To reflect upon and verbalize their own beliefs
If you ask participants to brainstorm the purpose of questions, you will probably record their responses on a flip chart. In that event, you could skip this slide and the next. Alternatively, you could show this slide as a summary of some of their comments related to discussion.
Questions posed in the context of discussion accomplish a different set of purposes:
to promote thinking
To hear diverse points of view
To help students work through their own understanding of the subject
To learn to listen to others
To reflect upon and verbalize their own beliefs

13. Educative questions are designed at a specific cognitive level
Notice that Bloom’s Taxonomy has been revised slightly. We prefer this version because the language is consistent with 21st Century skills and focuses on what the students are doing. The original purpose of the Bloom Taxonomy was to assist educators in communicating about learning outcomes. The taxonomy provides a common language for describing learner outcomes. For our purposes, the taxonomy provides a common nomenclature for talking about the level of cognition at which a question attempts to engage student thinking. Further, it provides a schema that we can share with students to help them understand their own thinking (metacognition) —and to understand the kind of thinking we are expecting from them in response to various types of questions.
Bloom’s Taxonomy is hierarchical in nature; that is to say, each level rests upon and builds upon the lower levels. The pyramidal structure is a nice visual to use for remembering the taxonomy. It not only connotes the hierarchical relationships but also suggests that we are likely to pose more questions at the lower levels in order to build the base for responding to the fewer, more complex questions at the higher levels.
What this hierarchical structure implies is that in order to understand, one must first know or be able to remember information; in order to apply, one must understand and recall; and so forth. The hierarchy should not be understood as a framework of thinking. Thinking is a dynamic, messy, sometimes chaotic process that cannot be depicted in any concrete, sequential fashion. The taxonomy is a tool to use in constructing questions and in thinking about thinking. It is not a cognitive map.

14. Clear Wording Clear wording
There is an additional activity in this module to address wording and syntax. In brief, educative questions are clear, simple, and appropriate.
Clear Wording

15. Reflect on the educative question (purpose, content focus, cognitive level, wording)
Consider new learning and also awareness of things that you may look at differently now.
What insights have you had?
What questions do you have?
What might you differently based on your learning today?

16. Q uality uestioning Materials adapted from QUILT curriculum:
Henrico County
Public Schools
What questions do you have?
Thank you
Materials adapted from QUILT curriculum:
Questioning and Understanding to Improve Learning and Thinking