QUESTIONING The Why’s and How’s of What We Ask by M. Kingsley, C. McCloud and L. McGee

Our First Questions From LCI Do we think about why we ask questions? Do we have a purpose in mind when we ask a question? Did we think about creating types of questions to achieve our desired t outcomes? Do we use taxonomies?

What is a taxonomy anyway? Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification. Taxonomy uses taxonomic units, known as taxa (singular taxon).

Bloom’s Taxonomy What is it? How does it work? How can we use it? Must we use the levels in a certain order?

Now That We Have That Perfectly Clear. Bloom said that there is a form to how we ask questions that has educational impact. The theory proposes that we should be planning questions for our lessons that will help us maximize our students’ learning.

OF COURSE – This is not the only taxonomy! We learned about other kinds of questioning techniques that we can use in lessons. One shows how questions can be changed to focus on different learning outcomes. This is the Convergent-Divergent theory. Another, given to us by LCI, (Learner Centered Initiatives) is not hierarchal but based on desired instructional outcome.

CONVERGENT vs DIVERGENT Analysis and integration of given or remembered information. Focus on a correct response. Can be factual and simple or factual and complex. Often at lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy; they tap processes of explaining, stating relationships and compare/contrast. More demanding of a student’s thought processes and may call for several plausible or correct responses. Often ask for opinions or conjectures. Tend to be at the upper levels of Bloom’s taxonomy and tap the processes of predicting, hypothesizing, inferring or reconstructing.

Convergent vs Divergent Examples What community do you live in? When do you use a period in a sentence? Divergent Is a neighborhood always a community? What happens when we do not use punctuation?

Another Taxonomy (see handout) This one forms questions based on the type of thinking you want students to do. For example, a text explicit question asks students to either find or remember something from a source. What colors are in the picture? An inference question asks learners to go beyond the immediately available information. It could be: How do the arts tell us what was important to a society?

So What Does This Mean To Us? There are some ways to begin using this in an easy manner. When writing lesson plans, think about writing down a few questions from one of the taxonomies to try out. Try questions from more than one taxonomy. Identify the desired outcome of your lesson and select questions that will fit and try them out.

More Basic Tips We have knowledge and comprehension type questions. We have evaluation type questions. It is important that we not sacrifice one for the other. It is important that we check for understanding of information when we expect students to evaluate or synthesize.

There can be student driven questions too. Junior Great books helps develop student questioning skills. You can discuss questioning techniques with children. You can use test prep opportunities by teaching analysis of types of questions, e.g., this a fact detail question that you can go to the text for the answer. Students can make test questions for themselves.

How do questioning techniques work with student goal setting? It is difficult to set goals if you don’t know what is expected of you. You can help students to identify personal goals and needs using the questioning techniques outlined in the two taxonomies.

How do you bring your kids into the process? Using these taxonomies is not only about teachers questioning students. It can also help students develop higher order thinking. It can put kids in the driver’s seat when it comes to questioning. It can help them to frame questions like: What do you want to do next? What did you do well? What do you need to work on?

7 REFLECTION QUESTIONS OR PROMPTS RELATED TO GOAL SETTING FOR STUDENTS. If I could write part of this story over I would ______. What would you like to learn more about in the next unit? What are three things you can do to improve your work in math? What do you need to do next week to become a better reader? Select work that shows a poor decision about something to do with your project. How did that decision impact your success with the project? Select work that shows you have reached the goal you set. How does that work show that you have reached your goal? If you could go on working on this piece, what would you do? After reviewing the checklist, I tried/will try to improve by taking the following steps.

In Summary Reading about the types of questioning we already do can help us focus our questions to better achieve the results we want. Teaching students questioning techniques can help in improving educational outcome, assist students in goal setting and incorporate students in rubric development. Student driven rubrics and goals are more often internalized and therefore more meaningful.