Questioning And Thinking
- 1. Questioning and thinking Developing thinking and processing skills through questioning.
- 2. Effective questioning Reinforces and revisits the learning objectives Includes staging questions to draw pupils towards key understanding or increase level of challenge Involves all pupils Engages thinking Promotes justification and reasoning Creates an atmosphere of trust; opinions valued Show connections between old and new learning Encourages pupils to speculate, hypothesise; ask as well as receive questions listen and respond appropriately
- 3. which what who how where when ?
- 5. Too much, give us a hand!
- 7. telling irreverent provocative Sorting And sifting elaborating unanswerable divergent strategic probing clarifying hypothetical organising irrelevant inventive planning essential
- 8. Essential questions What does it mean to be a good friend? What kind of friend shall I be? Who will I include in my circle of friends? How shall I treat my friends? How do I cope with the loss of a friend? What can I learn about friends and friendships from the novels we read in school? How can I be a better friend?
- 9. Thinking time What do you want them to learn during this topic? What are the essential questions you will be asking?
- 10. Mobile phones - essentials How have modern mobile phones changed the society we live in? What do phones offer today? Which features are considered most important by your peer group? produce a report of the results How would your ideal phone look? Design a phone of your own. Where and why are different designs successful? Why does advertising work? Discuss present advertising design an advertising campaign produce advert suitable for a radio
- 11. From essential to subsidiary Taking one of the essential questions for your topic what would be the next step?
- 12. Question generator methods Listing questions in categories. Mind map allowing the question base to grow. Spider diagram of the areas of learning. Hap-hazard set of thoughts to be sorted and sifted later.
- 16. telling irreverent provocative Sorting And sifting elaborating unanswerable divergent strategic probing clarifying hypothetical organising irrelevant inventive planning essential
- 17. telling probing strategic planning organising hypothetical clarifying elaborating essential
- 18. Hypothetical questions Suppose the earth had no moon How would my life change if I won the lottery?
- 19. Telling questions If the earth was to lose its moon what would happen in The first few moments The next few hours The next few months The subsequent years If I were to win the lottery what would happen in the first few moments… *!! *?!
- 20. Hypothetical +telling Thinking of your topic what could be suitable questions to cover these two categories?
- 21. Planning questions - Sources Who has done the best work on this subject? Which group may have gathered the best information? Which medium (Internet, CD-ROM, electronic periodical collection, scholarly book, etc.) is likely to provide the most reliable and relevant information with optimal efficiency? Which search tool or index will speed the discovery process?
- 22. Planning questions - sequence What are all of the tasks which need completing in order to generate a credible product which offers fresh thought backed by solid evidence and sound thinking? What is the best way to organize these tasks over time? How much time is available? Which tasks come first, and then . . .? Which tasks depend upon others or cannot be completed until others are finished?
- 23. Planning questions - pacing How much time is available for this project? How long does it take to complete each of the tasks required? How much time can be applied to each task? Do some tasks require more care and attention than others? Can some tasks be rushed? Is it possible to complete the project in the time available? How should the plan be changed to match the time resources?
- 24. Organising questions Colour camera ipod Down-loads Motorola Nokia radio Email Speed dialling Telephone makes
- 25. organising How much will you tell them and how much will you steer by constructing scaffolds? What ways could pupils organise their own work they collect; create their own scaffolds? What sources will you give them access to? When organising will you develop their planning skills by running the two sets of question types together?
- 26. Sorting and sifting Which parts of this data are worth keeping? Will this information shed light on any of my questions? Is this information reliable? How much of this information do I need to place in my database? How can I summarize the best information and ideas? Are there any especially good quotations I could use?
- 27. Strategic questions What do I do next? How can I best approach this next step?, this next challenge? this next frustration? What thinking tool is most apt to help me here? What have I done when I've been here before? What worked or didn't work? What have others tried before me? What type of question would help me most with this task? How do I need to change my research plan?
- 28. Elaborating questions What does this mean? What might it mean if certain conditions and circumstances changed? How could I take this further? What is the logical next step? What is missing? What needs to be filled in? Reading between the lines, what does this REALLY mean? What are the implied or suggested meanings?
- 29. Using the question banks How could you utilise the questions banks from the last three types to support the pupils in their learning process?
- 30. Probing questions Logic are there cues and clues in the way the information is presented which is showing us more information than we think? Prior knowledge I know this much, is there more here that can increase that knowledge? Intuition I suspect there is stuff here which would be useful, but what is not useful? Trial and error information can be retrieved from this source so am skimming and scanning through in the hope key words and phrases may appear which can be latched onto.
- 31. Clarifying questions Convert the fog into meaning. A collection of facts and opinions does not always make sense by itself. Hits do not equal TRUTH. A mountain of information may do more to block understanding than promote it. Defining words and concepts is central to this clarification process.
- 33. Arc of questions
- 34. Working on an essay about The Great Gatsby - Session 1 Teacher: Who is Eckleberg? Student: Not a real character, I mean, he's just a sign by the road. Teacher: What's he doing in the story then? Student: Well, Nick passes the sign when he drives to East and West Egg. Teacher: When does he show up in the story-every time Nick goes driving that way? (The student leafs through the book to pick out the instances. )
- 35. Working on an essay about The Great Gatsby - Session 1 Teacher: So now what do you think? Student: (looking over the list) The times he gets mentioned are when Nick's driving and thinking. Usually when something bad is about to happen or did just happen.
- 36. Session 2 a few days later Teacher: Why does Fitzgerald bother to mention the Eckleberg sign, when there are probably hundreds along the way? Student: Maybe it's an odd sign. See, it's this giant pair of glasses that are up there advertising an oculist, you know, an eye doctor. Teacher: Why didn't Fitzgerald make Eckleberg a bumper sticker, instead of a billboard? Student: 'Cause if he's a billboard he can look out.... He's like a god, up above everything.
- 37. Working on an essay about The Great Gatsby - Session 2 a few days later Teacher: Why is he located out there between East and West Egg? Student: Maybe 'cause it's like being stranded, like in heaven, away from things. Teacher: Why do you think he's an oculist? Students: (puzzled, slightly exasperated at being made to dig like this) Fitzgerald said. . . because he's an ad for an oculist. The guy who put him up there was an oculist.
- 38. Working on an essay about The Great Gatsby - Session 2 a few days later Teacher : But it could have been a car dealer, too. Why those enormous yellow spectacles? Student : Yeah.... (pauses, thinking) Maybe that says something about the idea of watching and seeing.... It's not ordinary eyes, it's extraordinary eyes... like the eyes of God, he takes it all in. Teacher : Remember what you said about when he shows up? Student : When there's evil-like judgment.
- 39. The toolbox contents Lists of questions suitable to ask at a generic level Available for students to collect when ever needed Consistent use around the school so students become familiar with thinking things through
- 40. References The Educational Technical Journal Volume 7, Nov/Dec 1997 Academic Connections; papers 1987 IDEA, Kansas State Univ.; research papers, 1995 The art of questioning, Dennis Wolf Improving your teaching through effective questioning techniques, William Camp Answering and asking questions, William Cashin