Improve thinking through questioning

Sonia D. Teran Tinago High School

A QUESTION NOT ASKED IS A DOOR NOT OPENED.

MARILEE GOLDBERG, THE ART OF THE QUESTION

1.

There are many classrooms in which teachers rarely pose questions above the "read-it-andrepeat-it" level.
Questions that demand inferential reasoning, hypothesis-formation or the creative transfer of information to new situations, simply do not occur with frequency

2. Teachers'

questions often go

nowhere.
Once the reply is given, that is the end of the sequence. Questioning in which the information builds from facts toward insight or complex ideas rarely take place

3. Classroom

questions are often disingenuous, rhetorical, or mere information checks.

Missing from many classrooms are what might be considered true questions, either requests for new information that belongs uniquely to the person being questioned or initiations of mutual inquiry

4. The

very way in which teachers ask questions can undermine, rather than build, a shared spirit of investigation.

teachers tend to monopolize the right to question question-driven exchanges that occur in classrooms almost uniformly take place between teachers and students, hardly between students.

1. Students learn to ask questions by asking questions. Students learn to ask good questions by asking questions and then receiving feedback on them. Students learn to become scholars by learning to ask good questions. 2. A student asking a question is at that moment a self-motivated learner - a researcher. This is the behavior we are trying to nurture.

Questions tell you that your students can understand and are thinking about what you say. Questions tell you whether your class is asleep or awake. 2. Questions give you immediate feedback when you are unclear, and tell you where you need to spend more time. 3. Education is a dialog between student and teacher. Question is part of this dialog.
1.

Questioning

is an integral part of an inquiry centered classroom.

It

is a learners thinking tool to carry out investigation about a subject matter.

The

power to question is vested with the teacher who uses this tool to either approve or disapprove of childrens knowledge thus empowering or disempowering them.

Everything. It is a way of evoking stimulating response or stultifying inquiry. It is, in essence, the very core of teaching. -John Dewey-

 Factual.

Soliciting reasonably simple, straight-forward answers based on obvious facts or awareness.

Answers to these types of questions are usually within a very finite range of acceptable accuracy.

Convergent.

 Divergent.

These questions allow students to explore different avenues and create many different variations and alternative answers or scenarios.
Example: In the love relationship of Hamlet and Ophelia, what might have happened to their relationship and their lives if Hamlet had not been so obsessed with the revenge of his father's death?

 Evaluative.

Requires sophisticated level of cognitive and/or emotional judgment.

Example. What are the similarities and differences between Roman gladiatorial games and modern football?
Combination.

Questions that blend any combinations above.

Inference Questions. Asks

the students to go beyond the immediately available information. They fill in the missing information.
Example: What do you know about the picture?

Interpretation Questions. Interpretive

questions propose that they understand the consequences of information or ideas. Example: How would the events be different had Yoyong not died?

Transfer Questions. Transfer questions

provoke a kind of breadth of thinking, asking students to take their knowledge to new places.
Example: After studying the life of Ninoy Aquino, how do you imagine his policy on police brutality to be?

Questions about Hypotheses. Typically, questions about what can be predicted and tested.
Reflective Questions. These are questions that make students ask themselves: "How do I know I know?"; "What does this leave me not knowing?"; "What things do I assume rather than examine? They take mulling over. Nonetheless, they eventually lead to important talk about basic assumptions.

Teachers know questions to be one of their most familiar- maybe even one of their most powerful-tools. But if observations are accurate, much of classroom inquiry is low-level. Moreover, these qualities turn out to be remarkably resistant to change. study of questioning done in 1912 found that two-thirds of classroom questions required nothing more than direct recitation of textbook information (Steven, 1912). 70 years after the original study, research suggests that 60 percent of the questions students hear require factual answers, 20 percent concern procedures, and only 20 percent require inference, transfer, or reflection (Gall 1970).

APPLICATION
UNDERSTANDING KNOWLEDGE

EVALUATION SYNTHESIS
ANALYSIS

Ask

Challenging Questions. Ask Well-Crafted, OpenEnded Questions. Ask Uncluttered Questions Learn to wait.

Sample Lesson Goal: Students will improve reading comprehension by learning how to raise higher level questions. Objective: After raising questions about pieces of fruit, students will write and answer several questions about core literature.

Materials needed: an apple and an orange. Anticipatory set: Present the apple and the orange and ask the class, "Which piece of fruit do you like better? Why?"

Process
1) Recall/specific detail: What color is the apple? What shape is the orange? Which one is bigger? 2) Comprehension: Which piece of fruit makes your fingers feel sticky? Which piece of fruit is packed with vitamin C? 3) Analysis: What are three differences/similarities between the apple and the orange?

4) Application: Can you think of a way to peel an orange without getting your fingers sticky? What would you do if you were starving and found a worm in your apple? 5) Synthesis: If you were going to create a new piece of fruit that was a combination of the apple and the orange, what would the fruit look and taste like? 6) Evaluation: Which fruit is better for you and why?

 After

students create fruit questions, introduce a short poem or story and ask them to write questions at each level of Bloom's taxonomy. On the board, list the questions under the different question headings (recall, comprehension, analysis, application, synthesis, evaluation) and ask them to answer at least two questions under each heading.

Assessment:

Using a rubric, students can self-assess their work by switching papers with a partner and checking to see the questions span the taxonomy ladder and are adequately answered based on information in the text.

Independent

practice: Ask students to record the questions raised at home, on a t.v. program, or in other classes and write an analysis of the types of questions that are most frequently asked. Are they lower or higher level questions?

First,

there is a social outcomestudents need the face-to-face skill of raising questions with other people: clarity about what they don't understand and want to know; the willingness to ask; the bravery to ask again.

Second,

there is a creative or inventive outcome. Being asked and learning to pose strong questions might offer students a deeply held, internal blueprint for inquiry -apart from the prods and supports of questions from without.

Stimulates

creativity Motivates fresh thinking Surfaces underlying assumptions Opens the door to change Focuses intention, attention, and energy

study at the University of California, San Diego involved healthy young male volunteers. The loss of just five hours of sleep in one night was found to depress their natural immune responses. There was a 30% reduction of infection-fighting T-cells- the natural killer cells. An important immune stimulant was also depressed the cancerfighting interleukin known as IL-2.

 After

a night of recovery sleep, the T cell activity returned to the original level, but interleukin levels remained depressed. These results suggest the importance of sleep in maintaining immunity and show that even a modest disturbance of sleep produces a reduction of natural immune responses

Change in student thinking habits and thinking modes is most apt to happen if appropriate teaching habits are cultivated and learned. "Drill and kill" questions with only one answer are killing imagination. We inspire learning when we manage to make the hard stuff easier and the easy stuff challenging

End of presentation