building students’ questioning skills
TRANSCRIPT
Building Students’
Questioning Skills
Molly Berger
Instructional Improvement Coordinator, ESD 105
Why is it important that students learn
to ask question?
Questions arise from students’ innate
curiosity about the world and from their
efforts to make sense of how that world
works.
C3 Framework p. 23
Something is not important because it is a
standard. It is a standard because it is
important.
Washington State Social Studies Standards:
EALR 5: Understands and applies reasoning skills to conduct research, deliberate,
and form and evaluate positions…
Washington ELA Standards for Social Studies and History
Anchor Standard 7: Conduct short as well as more sustain research….
Washington ELA Standards:
Speaking and Listening Anchor Standard 3: Evaluate a speaker’s point of view and
use of evidence and rhetoric
College, Career, and Civic Life Framework (C3)
Dimension 1: Developing Questions
Habit of Mind
1. Persisting
2. Managing impulsivity
3. Listening with understanding and
empathy
4. Thinking flexibly
5. Thinking about thinking (metacognition)
6. Striving for accuracy
7. Questioning and posing problems
8. Applying past knowledge to new
situations
9. Thinking and communicating with clarity
10. Gathering data through all senses
11. Creating, imagining, innovating
12. Responding with wonderment and awe
13. Taking responsible risks
14. Finding humor
15. Thinking interdependently
16. Remaining open to continuous learning
Where else about questioning is implied here?
Compelling and Supporting Questions
Central to a rich social studies experience is the capability for developing questions that can frame and advance an inquiry.
Those questions come in two forms: compelling and supporting questions.
College, Career and Civic Life Framework, p. 23
Compelling questions focus on enduring issues and
concerns. They deal with curiosities about how things
work; interpretations and applications of disciplinary
concepts; and unresolved issues that require students to
construct arguments in response.
In contrast, supporting questions focus on descriptions,
definitions, and processes on which there is general
agreement within the social studies disciplines, and
require students to construct explanations that advance
claims of understanding in response.
So, how do we teach them how to ask
questions?
Is there a progression of skills?
Do they understand how questions work to meet their
needs?
Teach about questions
Hierarchy of questions (but not linear)
Open and closed questions
Compelling and supporting questions
Journalistic questions
Other questioning strategies
What do we need to know? What questions will help us find out?
What? So what? Yes, but/and. Now what?
What do you know? How do you know it?
Question Formulation Technique
Question Formulation Technique
http://rightquestion.org/education
“Just when you think you know all that you need to know, you ask another
question and discover how much more there is to learn.”
– Sixth grade student, J.L. Stanford Middle School, Palo Alto, CA
“The reasons behind their questions often bowl me over with their sincerity,
the fact that [they] really want to know the answers because it’s important
to them, or they feel it would be important for others to know.”
– 4th Grade Teacher, Chicago
RULES FOR PRODUCING
Ask as many questions as you can
Do not stop to discuss, judge or answer the questions
Write down every question exactly as it is stated
Change any statement into a question
Which is the most challenging to follow for you? For your
students?
Question Focus
Cognitive dissonance and voter choice
KINDS of QUESTIONS
What are closed-ended questions?
What are the advantages of closed-ended
questions?
What are the disadvantages of closed-ended
questions?
What are open-ended questions?
What are the advantages of open-ended questions?
What are the disadvantages of open-ended
questions?
Change your questions
Review your list of questions and change one
closed-ended question into an open-ended.
Then, change one open-ended question into a
closed-ended one.
Prioritize Your Questions
Choose the three questions your group most wants
to know the answers to.
Keep in mind the QFocus.
List your three priority question on the back of your
recording sheet.
Prioritize Your Questions
Choose the three questions your group most wants
to know the answers to.
Keep in mind the QFocus.
List your three priority question on the back of your
recording sheet.
Share Your Questions
Please share:
• The questions you changed from closed to open-
ended and from open-ended to closed. Read each
question as originally written and how it was
changed
• Your three priority questions
• Your rationale for selecting those three
• The numbers of your priority questions
Reflection
What did you learn from your group members in
this process?
How would you apply this learning to another
situation?
How will you use these questions?
How are you going to use your three priority
questions?
Deconstructing the Process
What was the step?
What does it draw out of the student?
How is it important to the process?
How is it important to student learning?
Application
Individually list ideas for using this protocol with students
and/or staff
Now, share with your group
Discuss the following
What challenges do you anticipate?
What benefits do you see?
Notes and Ideas
Importance of the Q-focus
Learning drives the protocol
How do we prevent killing a good strategy?
It’s not that I’m so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.
Albert Einstein
Questioning is the ability to organize our thinking around what we don’t know.
The Right Question Institute
How do I create something out of nothing? How do I create my own life? I think it is by questioning. What I need is a focus. When I have the question, I have the focus.
Amy Tan
The word “why” not only taught me to ask, but also to think. And thinking has never hurt anyone. On the contrary, it does us all a world of good.
Anne Frank