Classroom conversations often begin with questions, but too often the questions are posed by the teacher, the textbook, and the test-maker. When we teach students to analyze not only the content but the questions in our classrooms, and when we teach them strategies for asking and exploring their own questions, students are more likely to engage in critical thinking and to take ownership of their learning.
Standards: Though the ability to analyze and ask questions is an essential critical thinking skill, it is addressed indirectly in the Common Core state standards. Depending on the content and the nature of the task, the questioning strategies included here have the potential to address most of the standards for Reading Literature and Informational Text as well as some of the standards for Writing, Speaking and Listening, and Language.
H-Q-Q Charts ReQuest Question Sets | Levels of Questions Bloom's Question Starters Question Formulation Technique (QFT) |
The H-Q-Q Chart
Finders, Margaret and Phyllis Balcerzak. “It’s Time to Revise K-W-L.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. 56.6. (20013): 460
The authors of “It’s Time to Revise K-W-L” argue that the traditional K-W-L (what I Know, what I Want to know, what I Learned) chart, a popular formative assessment designed to help students connect prior learning with new knowledge, may inhibit authentic student inquiry.
In its place, they propose the H-Q-Q Chart (what we’ve Heard about an issue or topic, what Questions we have, and after reading and searching for answers, what Questions we have about our new knowledge of the issue or topic).
- Column 1: Students work with a partner or in small groups to share what they have heard about a topic in the form of notes in first column.
- Column 2: Students generate questions about what they have heard in the second column and to work collaboratively to investigate their questions on the topic. This process “allows for a collaborative examination of deeply held misconceptions rather than the correction of shallow facts,” and encourages students to build on prior knowledge. It also provides a framework for students to explore conflicting ideas and to question their own misconceptions and values.
- Column 3: After students have researched for answers to their questions, students reflect on what they have learned and what more they need to learn by generating questions in the third column for further inquiry. These questions might be explored in class, independently, “or simply left percolating for some future exploration.”
Topic / Issue / Text: |
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H: What have we heard about the topic? |
Q: What questions do we have about the topic? |
Q: What new questions do we have? |
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ReQuest
From Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques for Your Classroom, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey
Also called Reciprocal Questioning, this strategy is designed to teach students to question a text as they read and learn. Used at the beginning of a unit or extended text, it can also provide teachers with an initial understanding of students’ background knowledge. Over time, this reading and questioning routine can be transferred to students working in pairs.
- Either silently or in a read-aloud, teacher and students read a segment of text.
- Students ask the teacher questions about the content they just read.
- Teacher and students change roles. Now everyone reads the next segment of text.
- Teacher asks students about the text.
- Students and teachers take turns back and forth.
Question Sets to Explore a Topic
From Chapter 3, The New St. Martin’s Handbook, “Exploring, Planning, and Drafting”
Questions to describe a topic
Originally developed by Aristotle, the following questions can help you explore any topic by carefully and systematically describing it:
- What is it? What are its characteristics, dimensions, features, and parts? What does it look like?
- What caused it? What changes occurred to create your topic? How is it changing? How will it change? What part of the changing process is your topic involved with? What may your topic lead to in the future?
- What is it like or unlike? What features differentiate your topic from others? What analogies does your topic support?
- What larger system is your topic a part of? How does your topic relate to this system?
- What do people say about it? What reactions does your topic arouse? What about the topic causes those reactions?
Question to explain a topic
This is the well-known question set of who, what, when, where, why, and how. Widely used in news reporting, these questions are especially useful to help you explain a topic:
- Who is doing it?
- What is at issue?
- When does it take place?
- Where is it taking place?
- Why does it occur?
- How is it done?
Questions to persuade
When your purpose is to persuade or convince, the following questions, developed by philosopher Stephen Toulmin, can help you think analytically about your topic:
- What claim are you making about your topic?
- What good reasons support your claim?
- What underlying assumptions support the reasons for your claim?
- What backup evidence can you find for your claim?
- What refutations of your claim can be made?
- In what ways is or should your claim be qualified?
Levels of Questions
Adapted by William Drewnowski from Teacher’s Manuel, The Language of Composition, and Teacher’s Manuel, Laying the Foundation
The information in the first column can be used by students working in partners or small groups to analyze the types of questions published in a textbook, on a test, or in a teacher’s lesson plan. After analyzing the questions posed by others, students read a passage or listen to a presentation and practice composing their own questions in the second column.
TYPES OF QUESTIONS |
YOUR QUESTIONS |
“On the Line” questions (also called comprehension questions) are text-based: the answers to these questions can be verified in the text. These questions often ask who, what, when, where, how? They are not debatable and everyone should have the same answer. |
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“Between the Line” questions (also called interpretation questions) require us to read between the lines and to draw conclusions about the author, people, events, and ideas in the text. They require analysis and inference. These questions stay within the text and often ask why, how, and so what? The answers require reasoning and textual evidence; answers may vary. |
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“Beyond the Line” questions (also called extension questions) use the text as a stimulus, but require us to extend and connect the text to ideas, events, and texts other than the one under discussion. The answers to these questions are often debatable, and reasonable people may disagree on the answers. |
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Click here for the Levels of Questions Chart handout.
Adapted from High/Scope Foundation and Checking for Understanding Fig. 3.3
Type of Thinking |
Key Words |
Prompts |
Remembering: Recall information, data, ideas, facts, experience |
define, describe, identify, know, label, list, match, name, outline, recall, recognize, reproduce, select, state |
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Understanding: Demonstrate understanding of the meaning and significance of facts, ideas, structures, problems… |
comprehend, convert, defend, distinguish, estimate, explain, extend, generalize, give examples, infer, interpret, paraphrase, predict, rewrite, summarize, translate |
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Applying: Solve new challenges with acquired knowledge, techniques; apply rules in a different way |
apply, change, compute, construct, demonstrate, discover, manipulate, modify, operate, predict, prepare, produce, relate, show, solve, use |
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Analyzing: Separating material or concepts into parts to identify and understand structures, causes, motives, generalizations |
analyze, break down, compare, contrast, diagram, deconstruct, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, identify, illustrate, infer, outline, relate, select, separate |
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Evaluating: Making judgments about information, ideas, quality, materials |
appraise, compare, conclude, contrast, criticize, critique, defend, describe, discriminate, evaluate, explain, interpret, justify, relate, summarize, support |
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Creating: Building a structure or pattern from diverse elements in an original or different way; proposing alternative solutions |
combine, compile, compose, create, devise, design, explain, generate, imagine, modify, organize, plan, present, produce, propose, rearrange, reconstruct, relate, reorganize, revise |
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Click here for a user-friendly handout of Bloom's Question Starters.
The Question Formulation Technique (QFT)
All students should learn how to formulate their own questions
All teachers can easily teach this skill as part of their regular practice.
In this approach to questioning, the teacher introduces a teacher-constructed Question Focus (QFocus) related to a unit of study. This can be done at the beginning of the unit to introduce students to a new topic; it can be done in the middle of a unit to deepen comprehension, stimulate new lines of thought, or prepare students for a long-term assignment; it can be done at the end of a unit to generate further study (34). In response to the QFocus, students will:
- Produce their own questions
- Improve their questions
- Prioritize their questions
The Question Focus
A QFocus can be a statement, a quote, an image, almost anything except a question prompt. The work of creating an effective QFocus resembles the work we do in designing an effective prompt. It should have a clear focus, provoke and stimulate new thinking, and not reveal a teacher’s bias or preferences. When the teacher displays the QFocus, s/he should not comment on it. See Table 2.1, Steps for Designing a QFocus, for guidance.
Produce Your Questions
Students discuss the rules for producing their own questions:
- 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.
Before revealing the QFocus, allow 3-4 minutes for students to discuss the rules, guided by this template for discussing the level of difficulty. This step captures students’ interest and helps students to remember the rules.
Students work in groups of 4-5; one student in each group assumes the role of recorder. Display the QFocus. Allow 5 minutes. Circulate and enforce the rules!
Improve Your Questions
In their groups, students categorize their questions. The authors recommend categorizing questions as close-ended or open-ended, but if students have been working on the types and levels of questions, they can apply that knowledge to this step (for example, students can categorize their questions as “on the line,” “between the line,” and “beyond the line” questions). Students can be challenged to changes questions from close-ended to open-ended.
Prioritize Your Questions
Students choose their three most important questions and list them by order of importance. Share and compare the priority questions produced by each group; ask students why they consider these the most important questions. The next steps depend upon your purposes.
For a brief but helpful outline of the QFT, read this article published in 2011 in the Harvard Education Letter: http://hepg.org/hel/article/507#home