1. The Art of Asking the Right Question
From

2. What Purpose does asking a question serve?
Gather information
Understand how a person is thinking
Test knowledge
Determine how you will be able to teach or support a student

3. The Decline of the Questioning Skill
Questioning seems to peak at about the age of 4.
At age 18 only 25% of students are still actively asking questions.
From Dan Rothstein DEN VirtCon 10/25/12

4. If questioning is so important then how do we teach students to be an independent questioner?

5. The Question Formulation Technique
The Right Question Institute
The Question Focus
The Rules for Producing Questions
Producing Questions
Categorizing Questions
Prioritizing Questions
Next Steps
Reflection

6. The Question Focus Should not: Should: Be a question
Reveal teacher preference or bias
Should:
Be clear, brief and sharply focused
Provoke or stimulate new lines of thinking

7. Question Focus Can be used to launch a lesson or unit
Can be as a culminating activity (Did we answer all of the questions?)
Can be a statement
Can be a picture
Can be a word or theme

8. RULES FOR PRODUCING QUESTIONS
Ask as many questions as you can
Do not stop to answer, judge, or to discuss the questions
Write down every question EXACTLY as it is stated
Change any statements into question

9. Asking Questions
Practicing ourselves

10. Choose one QFocus below to write questions about.
The Dead Sea Rift Valley
On the piece of paper write as many questions as you can in 4 minutes.
Don’t stop writing or lift you pencil/pen from the paper.

11. Categorizing Questions

12. What kind of questions did you ask about the topic?
Closed Questions
Open questions
One RIGHT answer
Yes or no questions
True or false questions
More than one right answer
Detailed answers must be given to answer the question
Opinion supported by evidence or data must given to answer the question
Mark your closed-ended questions with a “C”
Mark your open-ended questions with an “O”

13. Closed-ended Questions
Advantages
Disadvantages

14. Open-ended Questions
Advantages
Disadvantages

15. Changing questions
Change two of your closed-ended questions into open-ended questions
Change two of your open-ended questions into closed-ended questions
Why is this a skill we need to have students practice?

16. Prioritizing Questions

17. Prioritizing Questions
Criteria for prioritizing—set by teacher
Example of ways to have students prioritize questions
Choose three questions…
that most interest you
that are more important
that will best help you design your research project
you want or need to answer first
Tip: post the question focus while the students are prioritizing.

18. Prioritizing Questions
Ask students to think about their rationale for choosing the priority questions
Example
“Why did you choose these three questions as the most important?”

19. Sharing and reporting out

20. Sharing Questions you have changed Three Priority Questions
Read the original question then the new question
Three Priority Questions
Reasons for choosing priority questions
It is important for students to hear the thinking and reasoning of their classmates in this process.

21. Next Steps

22. How to use the questions the students developed
Homework assignments
Independent Projects
Final Reports
Research Papers
Class Work
Revisit the question throughout a unit to see which question have been answered.
Lower Elementary –bulletin board
Upper Elementary and Secondary—notebooks/journals

23. Reflection

24. Reflecting on the Question created
To help students continue to develop their own questions the need to learn how to self evaluated they questions they have created.
What did you learn?
What is the value of learning to ask your own questions?
How can you use what you learned?

25. Want to know more www.rightquestion.org DEN VirtCon
Discovery Education Virtual Conference
Free Webinar about teaching students how to ask their own questions:

26. TEDx Talk by Dan Rothstein