1. Questioning Techniques

2. Goals and Objectives Why Use Questioning Strategies?
Effective Questioning Techniques
Levels of Questioning…Increasing Understanding, Models for Use
What is Depth and Complexity?
Applying the Strategies

3. What are the purposes of teachers’ classroom questions?
To develop interest and motivate students to become actively involved in lessons
To evaluate students’ preparation and check on homework or seatwork completion
To develop critical thinking skills and inquiring attitudes
To review and summarize previous lessons
These purposes are generally pursued in the context of classroom recitation,

4. What are the purposes of teachers’ classroom questions? Cont.
To help students gain insights by showing new relationships
To assess achievement of instructional goals and objectives
To stimulate students to pursue knowledge on their own

5. Asking Questions About Picture 1 - Activity
Look at the picture of the car driving down the road.
Generate three questions.

6. Why use Questioning Strategies?
Questioning strategies are essential to the growth of critical, creative, and higher level thinking skills. (Shaunessy,2005)
When teachers regularly model questioning strategies and expect student questions, students learn to formulate questions that will improve their learning. (Fisher, 2007)
Read title.
Carefully crafted questions can lead students to more critical, creative, and higher level thinking skills: depth and complexity.
And by providing higher level questions for students, they learn to formulate their own high level questions.

7. Teachers ask __________ questions a day -- ______________ a year, according to The Guardian. Pair/Share

8. Teachers ask 400 questions a day -- 70,000 a year, according to The Guardian.

9. How many of those 400 questions a day were INTENTIONAL?
I Wonder……….
How many of those 400 questions a day were INTENTIONAL?

10. Research states... On the average, during classroom recitations
Approximately 60 percent of the questions asked are lower cognitive questions
20 percent are higher cognitive questions
20 percent are procedural.

11. Research States….
Research indicates that questioning is second only to lecturing in popularity as a teaching method
Classroom teachers spend anywhere from thirty-five to fifty percent of their instructional time conducting questioning sessions
What is the implication this data has on our classrooms?

12. Take the Questioning Quiz
From a study on Questioning Techniques
by Kathleen Cotton 

13. Question 1
Which is more effective for fostering learning? 1.) Oral questions posed during classroom recitation? 2.) Written questions

14. Question 1 - Answer
Which is more effective for fostering learning? 1.) Oral questions posed during classroom recitation? 2.) Written questions Answer: “1", Oral questions.

15. Question 2
Should posing questions before students read be done with students who are:
1.) Older/better readers?
2.) Younger/struggling readers?

16. Question 2 - Answer
Should posing questions before a reading be done with students who are:
1.) Older/better readers?
2.) Younger/struggling readers?
Answer: “1", because young/struggling readers often only read the parts of the text that help them answer the questions.

17. Question 3
Increasing the use of higher-order questions to ___ percent or more is positively related to student-to-student interactions, speculative thinking, length of student responses, and relevant questions posed by learners.

18. Question 3 - Answer
Increasing the use of higher-order questions to ___ percent or more is positively related to student-to-student interactions, speculative thinking, length of student responses, and relevant questions posed by learners.
Answer: 50 percent.

19. Question 4
Should wait time differ when asking lower- vs. higher-order questions?

20. Question 4 - Answer
Should wait time differ when asking lower- vs. higher-order questions?
Answer: Yes. Wait time for lower-order questions should be about three seconds, and beyond three seconds for higher-order questions

21. Wait Time – 2 kinds
amount of time the teacher allows to elapse after he/she has posed a question and before a student begins to speak
amount of time a teacher waits after a student has stopped speaking before saying anything

22. Wait Time
The average wait-time teachers allow after posing a question is one second or less.
Why is this not a good practice? (Pair/share)
Students know that if they don’t answer the teacher will quickly respond. Does not give the student time to process.

23. Wait Time
Increasing wait-time beyond three seconds is positively related to the following student outcomes:
Improvements in the student achievement
(2) Improvements in student retention
(3) Increases the number of higher cognitive responses generated by students
(4) Increases the length of student responses
(5) Increases the number of unsolicited responses
(6) Decreases students’ failure to respond

24. Depth….The Bigger Picture
Refers to how a person approaches “the big picture”. Often, the approach starts with the concrete and moves to the abstract; or starts with the known and moves to the unknown.
Depth refers to the concept of challenging learners by enabling them to venture further, deeper, and more elaborately into the area under study.
There is more information included on the Hand-out: Depth and Complexity, on page 7.

25. Depth… continued Requires students to examine
facts, concepts, details, and new knowledge
generalizations
related principles and theories .
High level questioning is a way to get to the depth and complexity that students need to uncover details and new knowledge, as well as to adopt new perspectives and to see patterns in connections.

26. Complexity…. More Parts
Bridges the content to other disciplines,
Enhancing the relevance for students
Complexity refers to the concept of broadening the learner’s understanding of the area or areas under study by asking him/her to make connections, relationships, and associations between, within, and across subjects and disciplines.

27. Bigger picture More parts
Depth: Requires a student to uncover the detail about how a car works
Complexity: Requires a student to see the working relationships between the different parts
To put it more succinctly, think of Depth as the Bigger Picture and Complexity as More Parts.
Note to presenter: Click once to bring in the words Bigger Picture and once again to bring in the words More Parts
More parts

28. How to increase Depth and Complexity
Teachers choose instructional materials that engage, develop, and challenge.
Teachers model for and interact with students:
ask questions
provide feedback
give assignments
provide assessment
Students engage with the content and each other at high levels, with increased Depth and Complexity in their interactions.
Read title.
Teachers choose challenging and engaging instructional materials, model and interact with students, and students engage with the content at higher levels.

29. Increasing question complexity…
Extends thinking skills
Clarifies understanding
Creates links between ideas
Enhances curiosity
Provides challenges
Research shows that increasing response wait time can increase achievement and contributions by students who don’t usually participate. Increasing complexity can extend thinking skills, enhance curiosity, and provide challenges to students.
Think about what could happen in your own classroom when wait time is increased and you analyze the questions you ask for depth and complexity.

30. Research has drawn theses conclusions from role of classroom questioning:
Instruction which includes posing questions during lessons is more effective in producing achievement gains than instruction carried out without questioning students.
Students perform better on test items previously asked as recitation questions than on items they have not been exposed to before.
Questions which focus student attention on important elements in the lesson result in better comprehension than questions which do not.

31. Thin & Thick questions Thin Questions: Who, When, Where, How Many…..
What if…
How did…
Why did…
What would happen if…
What might…
How would you feel if…
What do you think...

32. Lower cognitive questions Vs Higher cognitive questions
Fact, closed, direct, recall, and knowledge questions
Higher Cognitive Questions
Open-ended, interpretive, evaluative, inquiry, inferential, and synthesis questions

33. “While questions which elicit lower level thinking are an important part of teaching, they are useless unless they build toward questions which help kids develop higher order thinking skills.”
Benjamin Bloom
Remember that questions which elicit lower level thinking are an important part of teaching, but they must build toward questions which help kids develop higher order thinking skills”.
To help teachers, we have provided examples of questions a teacher might put on cards to help students think at deeper levels. They are listed on pages 12 and 13 of your take-away packet. (Question Cards for Classroom use.)

34. Asking Questions About Picture 2- Activity
Look at the questions in the first picture as a group.
Decide if the questions were low or high level questions
Using handout 4, write four higher order questions about picture 2

35. Effective Questioning Techniques
Increase Think time and Wait time
Talk less, ask more
Move from simple to complex
Avoid “yes or no” question
Don’t say a student’s name before posing question
Don’t let a few students dominate
the conversation/questioning/answering
Now we will look at effective questioning TECHNIQUES.
See same Handout- Effective Questioning Techniques: page 9, Roman Numeral 1.
Active participation: Take a minute to think about what techniques you have used successfully and what techniques you would like to use more often. This time, turn and talk to a neighbor. Which techniques deserve more emphasis? What’s missing from the list?
Turn and talk, giving them about 5 minutes to discuss. Then share out.

36. Questions?

37. Good questions help: Provide Clarification Check Assumptions
What is meant by ______?
How could you say that another way?
How do you know?
How could we prove or confirm that?
If ____happened, what would be the result? Support your conclusion.
What feelings or emotions might have caused _____?
Provide Clarification
Check Assumptions
Provide Reasons and Evidence
Examine Viewpoints
Investigate Implications and Consequences
Note to presenter: Read bullets one at a time. As you read each bullet on left hand column, click enter to show corresponding example(s).
Hand-out: Effective Questioning techniques- page 9 & 10.
Active participation: Look at Roman numeral V (p. 10): QUESTIONS to Increase Understanding. Circle the bullets of those questions you feel you already have strongly in place. Indicate the ones you want to further develop. ***Notice that the questions are listed according to categories of Bloom’s levels of thinking.
Turn and talk: In this discussion, we are modeling with you how to use the Talking Chip Protocol (p.11). Each group member will have only 2 talking chips to indicate that they will have only 2 times to talk. Once the chips are used, they can no longer give input to the discussion.
Share out any insights/thoughts.

38. Levels of Inquiry – Handout 2
Level 1 – Gather and recall information
Create a foundation to prior knowledge
Level 2– Processing
Make connections with the information gathered
Level 3 – Apply and evaluate actions/solution
Applying the new knowledge

39. Costa’s Levels of Questioning Practice - Activity

40. Maximize…
Minimize...
...asking questions that begin with words like "What if," "Explain," "Analyze," "Create," and "Compare and contrast," etc.
...asking questions that have a "yes" or "no" response and questions that require merely direct recall of definitions etc.
...the amount of time you wait after you pose a question, i.e. wait-time, in order to allow students to process the question in their minds.
...calling on students directly after you pose a question and calling on a student before you even ask the question.
...asking students to elaborate on their answers and asking students "why."
...telling a student their answer is wrong and not asking them to think of why it is wrong.
...opportunities for students to pose questions amongst themselves.
...straight lecture without student interaction.
providing opportunities that challenge students' original conceptual understandings
...providing opportunities that do not encourage creative and critical thinking
...encouraging students to work through their decision making process, even if it bring frustration and makes them leave their comfort zone of learning.
…giving students direct answers to their questions without allowing them to think through the decision making process.

41. Tools of the Trade Effective Questioning Techniques
Costa’s Level of Inquiry
Practice activity (handout)
Subject area groups
Bloom’s Taxonomy
Depth and Complexity Resources
DOK
Q Chart
Picture questions, one from each quadrant
These are some of the tools we can use when we incorporate higher level Questioning and Depth & Complexity into the classroom.
Today we’ll focus on Bloom’s Taxonomy and de Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats. We will have information on the Depth and Complexity Icon system and Socratic Seminars available for further training.
Active Participation: First we’d like to do an activity using Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy: Plan for Questioning to write several higher level thinking questions and/or activities for the story “A Rescue Zoo” on the yellow sheet.
Directions: Read the story and create some high level questions and/or activities for the story. Bloom’s planning supports are on pages 15 to 21 in your hand-out packet. Use these supports and the Plan for Questioning template on p. 15 to write your questions. We will then ask for several people to share one question/activity.
Allow 10 mins. to formulate questions and share out.
(Resources on pages 15 to 21: Effective Questioning Techniques; Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy: Plan for Questioning; Bloom’s Taxonomy to Plan Lessons; Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy-Verbs, Materials, Activities)