1. What Are The Characteristics of Quality Questions?
Presenters
Keisha Becerra
Carol Malone- Cooper
Susan McGinnis

2. What are Quality Questions?
Quality questions need to be “ Purposeful, engaging, and consequential. They are aligned with learning goals, awaken students curiosity and class participation, and result in desired learning outcomes.” ( Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001; Bloom, 1987)

3. Four Identified Characteristics of Quality Questions
The questions promote one or more carefully defined instructional purposes.
The questions focus on important content
The questions facilitate thinking at a stipulated cognitive level.
The questions communicate clearly what is being asked.

4. Quality Questions Are Purposeful
The purpose of a question depends on the instructional objective.
When teachers are clear about the purposes of questions, they can better assess student responses.
The two typical classroom contexts for questioning are recitation and discussion.

5. Recitation
The teacher poses a question, and after the student responds the teacher “ confirms the rightness or wrongness of the answer.”
Recitation questions are usually low – level questions.
These questions ask students to recall facts, provide definitions, or demonstrate comprehension.
These questions rarely engage students in thinking deeply about an issue.

6. When Should Teachers use Recitation Questions?
To review before a test
To see if students have read and understood a passage
To check on completion and/or comprehension of homework
To assess what students know about a topic
To cue students on important content
To provide opportunities for drill and practice
To model good questioning for students

7. Discussion
The teacher might pose a single, provocative, open-ended question and ask other questions on for clarification. Students do not wait for the teacher’s permission to speak and they do not look to the teacher for assessment of responses; they engage in dialogue with one another, listen respectfully, and make their own evaluations.

8. When Should Teachers use Discussion Questions?
To give students practice in thinking out loud
To encourage students to hear and respect diverse points of view
To provide an opportunity for students to speculate, formulate hypotheses, and offer evidence to support ideas
To encourage students to make connections that will help them move information to long- term memory
To create opportunities for students to transfer learning to different contexts or situations

9. Quality Questions Have a Clear Content Focus
Once teachers have specified the purpose(s) for their question, they must wrestle with the question” On what specific content do I want to pose a question to students?”
Teachers must consider the alignment of their content to standards.

10. Understand by Design Frameworks
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe created the Understand by Design Framework. This model advocates the backward design process, which consists of three stages:
Worth Being Familiar With
Important to Know and Do
Enduring Understanding

11. Questioning Circle Framework
The Questioning Circle framework was developed by Christenbury and Kelly in Teachers questions can fall into one, two or all three domains. The most powerful questions are found in the intersection of the three areas.
External Reality
( Other Subjects)
Personal Knowledge
( Student Experience)
The Subject
( Term Matter)

12. Quality Questions engage students at varied and appropriate cognitive levels
Questions are tools for both information seeking and information processing (Hunkins, 1995).
A variety of tools exist for helping identify and distinguish different kinds of thinking or cognition.

13. Bloom’s Taxidermy
AFTER
BEFORE

14. Bloom’s Taxonomy Revised
The most significant change is the move from a one-dimensional to a two-dimensional scheme of classification
Knowledge ~ Remember
Comprehension ~ Understand
Application ~ Apply
Analysis ~ Analyze
Synthesis ~ Evaluate
Evaluation ~ Create

15. Differences between the Original and Revised Bloom’s
New levels are expressed as verbs instead of nouns
A number of the roots are changed
(remember is distinguishable from knowledge)
The order of the last two levels has been reversed – evaluate precedes create
A new feature – each of the six cognitive dimensions also have two or more specific cognitive processes (p )

16. Differences between the Original and Revised Bloom’s
The majority of the categories relate to the ability to transfer knowledge, not just remember.

17. Remember Recognize or recall information
Students must be able to retrieve information if they are to use it in more cognitively complex operations.
KEY – teachers must embed such questions within the “larger task of constructing new knowledge or solving new problems” (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001, pp ).

18. Understand
A first step for teachers is to facilitate connections between new knowledge and prior knowledge and experiences.
If a question is to move a student beyond the remember level, it must include information that the student did not encounter during initial instruction.
Compare the circumstances surrounding the United States’ acquisition of
the Louisiana Purchase to those surrounding its purchase of Alaska.

19. Apply The taxonomy distinguishes between two types of application:
Execution – applying a procedure to a familiar task
Using the information provided on a U.S. map, estimate the length in miles
of the Mississippi River.
Implementation – (more difficult) applying a procedure to an
unfamiliar task
Identify the U.S. cities you believe developed after the advent of rail travel.

20. Analyze
Involves breaking down a whole (idea or problem) into its component parts and determining how the parts are related one to another
~ Fact vs. Opinion, Reality vs. Fantasy
~ Connecting conclusions with supportive statements
~ Relevant vs. Extraneous Information
~ Determining the relationship between and among ideas
What are some of the primary themes in Lewis and Clark’s journals?

21. Evaluate
Involves making a judgment based upon the application of a set of standards or criteria.
The KEY
– Identification and use of standards and criteria.
~ Quality
~ Effectiveness
~ Efficiency
~ Consistency

22. Evaluate Checking – making judgments about internal consistency
Were the social policies of President Johnson’s administration consistent
with his voting record as a U.S. senator?
Critiquing – making judgments based upon external criteria
Which of these two paintings best represent impressionist art?

23. Create
Engages students in putting together disparate parts to form a new whole
“Create results in a new product that is something that can be observed and that is more than the students’ beginning materials”(Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001, p. 65).
Design a security system that would protect the safety of all students in our school with minimal infringement on individual rights.

24. The Knowledge Dimension
Factual knowledge – “bits of information”, terminology, specific details and elements
Conceptual knowledge – more complex, organized information (classifications, categories, principles and generalizations, etc…)
Procedural knowledge – how to do something – skills and algorithms, techniques, methods, “when to do what” in specific domains
Metacognitive knowledge – knowledge about cognition in general as well as an awareness of and knowledge about one’s own cognition

25. Marzano’s Taxonomy
Recitation questions – simply retrieve information previously learned
What factors contributed to the stock market crash of 1929?
Construction questions – require students to construct new knowledge that has not been previously learned
How did the public reaction to the fall of the stock market following
September 11, 2001, compare to the Crash of 1929?

26. Gallagher and Aschner’s Taxonomy
Recall – equivalent with the remember level
in Bloom’s
Convergent questions – one correct response, a narrowing or focusing of the thought process
Divergent questions – no one right answer; must think of new and different possibilities that are justifiable

27. Reading Teacher’s Taxonomy
Reading the lines – the answer is in the text
Reading between the lines – inference
Reading beyond the lines – bring your perspective to the text (Evaluate/Create in Bloom’s)

28. Walsh and Satte’s Taxonomy
Recall questions = remember in Bloom’s
~ Simply recall what they have learned
Use questions = understand, apply and analyze
in Bloom’s
~ Do something with what they have learned
Create questions = create / evaluate
~Use their imaginations to go beyond what they have learned or
been told

29. Considerations in Choosing a Taxonomy
The developmental levels of your students
The content areas you teach
Your own personal preferences and professional strengths
The school faculty choosing one taxonomy (beneficial)

30. Caveats regarding the use of Bloom’s
The cognitive level of the response is dependent on the context in which a question is posed and the student’s experiential and knowledge background
50% of answers to oral questions do not match the cognitive level of the questions
Most textbook questions are at the lowest level of Bloom’s
ALL students can think at higher level if given adequate support and instruction!

31. Quality questions are clear and concise
Write the question
Flaws are easier to see when
printed
Reread to check for a clear
meaning

32. Quality questions are clear and concise
Wording is critical to the ultimate quality of the question
Consider the students’ perspective
Can students translate the question into their own words?

33. Quality questions are clear and concise
Common understanding
of the kind of response the
question is seeking
Wording and gender are important considerations
Appropriate to students’ age, grade, achievement level, cultural background, etc.

34. Quality questions are clear and concise
Syntax – “the structure of the sentence and the manner in which words are put together”
Grammatically correct
Address only one issue for response
– single barreled
Sufficient contextual information
to arrive at an appropriate answer

35. Quality questions are clear and concise
Acid test of a quality question
Does it feel right?
Does it sound right?
Is it easy to say?
Is it easy to understand?

36. Quality questions are clear and concise
Quality questions are seldom asked by chance.
Carefully crafted pivotal questions
Move class into the heart of the lesson
Move student thinking to higher levels
Can be time consuming and difficult,
but well worth the effort
Stockpile questions and share
with others

37. Quality questions are clear and concise
From the asking/answering of pivotal questions other questions emerge
Clarify
Extend understandings
Extend the frontier of
student learning

38. Quality questions are clear and concise
“Muscles of Classroom Questions” must be crafted according to:
Instructional purpose
Content focus
Desired cognitive level
Learner needs and interests