1. Questions That Spark Curiosity
Deb Haney and Maria Henry
Villa Cresta Elementary

2. Objectives Participants will:
Embrace curiosity to encourage questioning and critical and creative thinking
Use questioning models and strategies to engage students in fluid and flexible thinking

3. Why do we ask questions? Assess students’ understanding of a concept
To review and summarize lessons
Determine what to reteach or teach next
Spark conversation/ improve social skills
Provide opportunities for students to ask questions which can lead to more sophisticated discussions.

4. Why should we strive to improve our questioning?
Statistics show that most teachers ask an average of questions on a daily basis % of these questions are low-level questions that only require students to recall something they have already learned (Tienken, et al., 2010). Questions must be planned, structured, and systematic.

5. Why must curiosity come first
Why must curiosity come first? When we are curious our brain is ready for learning and retention. Studies conducted by neuroscientists have found that asking stimulating relevant questions will increase students’ ability to learn.

6. Lower Level Questions…
Require students to remember, reiterate, or find information in the text.
Require students to simply recall what they have read or learned in a way which produces a “correct” or “incorrect” response.
Set the stage for making sure students are ready for higher-level discussions.

7. Higher-Order Questions…
Encourage critical thinking rather than “one right answer”
Encourage more than one process for solving problems
Require students to analyze, synthesize, evaluate, categorize, or apply what they have learned.
Increase focus on metacognition. When students are able to tackle their own questioning, they are more likely to make meaning of a text, and make deeper connections (Walsh & Sattes, 2005).

8. REVISED Bloom’s Taxonomy
Corresponding questions are: Innovative
Evaluative
Interpretive
Factual
CCSS:
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
Craft and Structure
Key Ideas and Details
Lorin W. Anderson and David R. Krathwohl, 2001

10. Listen to the story “What Do You Do With An Idea
Listen to the story “What Do You Do With An Idea?” by Kobi Yamada and work with your group to create 2 higher level questions that you could ask students.

11. Ask higher-level thinking questions to focus, extend, and enrich learning and understanding:
Convergent
Divergent

12. Convergent Questions Usually require one correct, FACTUAL response
Focus understanding of information or situations
Lead to divergent questions

13. Divergent Questions encourage critical thinking – both interpretive and evaluative.

14. Types of Divergent Questions
Quantity –
Supposition –
Point of View –
Involvement –
Forced Association –
List All (Brainstorm)
What if?
Different Perspectives
Personalization
Synectics, analogies, metaphors

15. Learning to read is like learning to swim.
Chucking a kid into the deep end without any help isn’t likely to teach him anything except to hate swimming. But no child ever learned to swim with his feet firmly planted on the bottom, either.
The question is: What’s the right amount of struggle?
Cory Turner, Common Core Reading: The Struggle over Struggle, 2014

16. What types of questions engage our students intellectually
What types of questions engage our students intellectually? How do we encourage our students to think at a deeper level?

17. Remember to include higher level questions
Now It’s Your Turn
With your team:
Choose 2 texts from upcoming ela units.
Create a list of questions where you scaffold convergent to divergent questions.
Remember to include higher level questions
Select a recorder to type your questions and a reporter to share with us!