Thinking Through
Quality Questioning
Facilitated by
Trisha Carroll, KEDC Instructional Consultant/Director
Social Studies Network
May 2, 2014
Slides and Content from:
TTQQ – Jackie Walsh & Beth Sattes
Essential Question
How can quality questioning enhance
teacher and student
thinking and learning?
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Learning Targets
1. To explore the connections between classroom
questioning and student thinking and learning
2. To understand the characteristics of questions
that activate student thinking and learning
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
What Do I Know and Want to Know
About the Learning Targets?
What?
Why?
Think-Puzzle-Explore
How?
Select one of the learning targets, identify what
you think you know and any questions you
have about it.
(page 7, Activity Packet)
To make meaning of the learning targets,
connect to prior knowledge, and stimulate
curiosity about the topic under study
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
What is our
understanding of
thinking?
What is Thinking?
What do we mean when we say,
“Students should be engaged in
higher level thinking”?
 Think is the 12th most used verb in the English
language…but how well do we understand
what it means?
--Making Thinking Visible, p. 5
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Thinking in the Knowledge
Economy: Say Something
 Stand up and find a “thinking partner.”
 Turn to p. 12 in your Activity Packet, and read the excerpt from
Sawyer related to “Thinking in the Knowledge Economy.”
 Turn to your partner, and say something about this excerpt.
Listen as your partner says something about the passage.
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Create a Culture for Thinking
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Characteristics of Classroom Culture for Thinking
and Learning
Turn to an elbow partner to discuss this question…
What do you consider to be the
characteristics of a classroom culture
that nurtures student thinking and
learning?
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Which of the following visuals is most similar to the
classroom culture you envisioned? Select 1.
Sea Shore
Flower Garden
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Jungle
Ocean Reef
Norms to Create a Culture for
Thinking and Learning
Classroom Norms
 Purposes of Questioning
 Wait Times
 Participation
Refer to page 15 – Here’s What, So What? Pair Conversation
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Answering As a Process: How does this
connect to your understanding of
“thinking?”
Attend to
the
Question
Bring
Question
to Working
Memory &
Decode
Search
Long-term
Memory for
Relevant
Knowledge
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Bring
Relevant
Knowledge
to Working
Memory &
Form a
Response
Answer
Question
Out Loud
Provide Time to Process
Wait
Time
2
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
The length of time a teacher
waits after a student stops
talking in response to a
question before giving
feedback or calling on
another student…
(Minimum: 3-5 seconds)
Responding Matters:
Think-Pair-Share
Responding to questions matters. “So when teachers
allow students to choose whether to participate or
not . . . they are actually making the achievement gap
worse.”
—Dylan Wiliam, Embedded Formative Assessment, p. 81
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Developing Student Response-ability
 Hold students accountable for formulating responses to
questions.
 Develop student capacity to ask questions.
 Provide opportunities for students to learn
collaboratively.
 Teach skills of collaborative discussion.
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Teach Skills of
Collaborative Discussion
 Central to ELA Speaking and Listening Standards
 Focus of Kentucky Teacher Evaluation
—3B: Questioning and Discussion Techniques
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
ELA Speaking & Listening Standards—
Comprehension and Collaboration
1. Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of
conversations and collaborations with diverse partners,
building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly
and persuasively.
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
ELA Speaking & Listening Standards—
Comprehension and Collaboration
2. Integrate and evaluate information presented in
diverse media and formats, including visually,
quantitatively, and orally.
3. Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use
of evidence and rhetoric.
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
KY Teacher Evaluation—3B
Questioning & Discussion Techniques
Accomplished
Exemplary
Questions designed to promote Teacher uses a variety of
thinking and understanding
questions to challenge students
cognitively, advance high-level
Teacher provides adequate
thinking and discourse, and
time for students to respond
promote metacognition.
Teacher engages most
Students formulate many
students in discussion,
questions, initiate topics, and
employing a range of strategies make unsolicited contributions.
Students themselves ensure
that all voices are heard in the
discussion.
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Recitation
 Recitation is the most common context for classroom
questioning. Typically, the teacher asks a question, calls on
one student to respond, gives an evaluation of the rightness or
wrongness of the answer, and asks another question.
 This is also called I-R-E…Initiation, Response, Evaluation
Turn to an elbow partner and discuss how this questioning
strategy can be a strength and a weakness in your classroom.
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Discussion
 According to research, discussion appears in
classrooms less than 3 percent of the time. In
discussion, the teacher typically poses one openended question. Students are challenged to think
deeply, listen respectfully to one another, and
develop new understandings.
 The teacher question provides focus. Student
thinking and interactions determine the depth and
dimensions.
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Rubric for Assessment of
Student Skills for Discussion
With a partner, review the rubric.
1. Think together about how this rubric might support
student participation in discussion.
2. Consider how this rubric relates to student and
teacher behaviors suggested in the following:
 KY Teacher Evaluation—3B – Questioning and Discussion
Techniques
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Frame Quality Questions





Determine content focus.
Consider instructional function.
Stipulate expected cognitive level.
Match to social context.
Polish grammar and word choice.
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
1. Content Focus
 Aligned with learning goals? (Rigor)
 Promotes identified content standard(s)
 Related to identified student learning target
 Addresses student needs, interests, and
experiences? (Relevance)
 Within students’ zone of proximal development
 Related to real-world experiences
 Connected to other concepts in subject under
study or to other subjects? (Relationships)
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Consider the Type of Knowledge
Embedded in Standard (Rigor)
Knowledge Dimension of Revised Bloom
 Factual Knowledge
 Conceptual Knowledge
 Procedural Knowledge
 Metacognitive Knowledge
(p. 22, TTQQ)
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Consider the Interconnectedness of Knowledge
Across Students’ Experiences
(Relevance & Relationships)
Christenberry’s
Questioning
Circles, p. 24,
TTQQ
Content
under study
Personal
interests,
experience;
real-life
applications
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Content
from other
subject
areas
Purposes
for Questioning
“I suggest that there are only two good reasons to ask
questions in class: to cause thinking and to provide
information to the teacher about what to do next.”
—Dylan Wiliam, Embedded Formative Assessment, p. 79
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
What instructional function is the
question intended to further?
√ Essential Question
(integrating unit or lesson of
study)
√ Hook Question
(motivating/engaging)
√ Diagnostic Question
(activating prior knowledge/
conceptions)
√ Check for Understanding
(formative assessment)
√ Probing/scaffolding
(getting behind student
thinking; assisting in concept
development)
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
√ Inference Question
(drawing conclusions)
√ Interpretation Question
(inviting analysis)
√ Transfer Question
(using in novel settings)
√ Predictive Question
(strengthening cause & effect
thinking)
√ Reflective Question
(supporting metacognitive
thinking)
Cognitive Level
“Learning is a consequence of
thinking.” David Perkins, Smart Schools
........................
Remembering is a consequence of processing
information—making personal meaning, making
connections to what one already knows,
transferring learning to a new setting, and so
forth.
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Cognitive Dimensions of
Revised Bloom Taxonomy
What?
Why?
Jigsaw
How?
Use Jigsaw Cooperative Learning as
Deepen understanding of six levels of
the Revised Bloom Taxonomy by
learning about and teaching one;
strengthen shared understanding of
the kind of thinking required at each
cognitive level
outlined on activity sheet, p. 22
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Instructional Function
Check for Understanding (formative assessment): The purpose is
to determine if students understand the passage and know how
to identify an argument and find evidence in the text to support
the argument. (Check for both reading comprehension and text
analysis)
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Analyzing and Editing Questions
What?
Why?
How?
Rewriting Questions to Improve Quality
To reinforce the characteristics of QQ’s
and to think about strategies for
improving the quality of an already
formulated question
Facilitator modeling and pair conversation
using examples on pp. 27-28 of Activity
Packet.
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
How Does the Rewording Improve
the Question?
Original Question: What were the major problems
facing the United States that led to the Civil War,
and how would life be different today if the
southern states had not seceded?
Revisions:
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Strengthen Thinking-toLearn Behaviors




Expect thoughtful responses
Afford time for thinking
Scaffold thinking and responding
Make thinking visible
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Learning Targets
1. To explore the connections between classroom
questioning and student thinking and learning
2. To understand the characteristics of questions
that activate student thinking and learning
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Essential Question
How can quality questioning enhance
teacher and student
thinking and learning?
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013
Connect-Extend-Challenge: A Final
Thinking Routine
 Reflect on your learning experience in this
session.
 Complete the reflection for the session, and
leave this in the center of your table as you
depart.
Thank you for your participation in today’s
professional learning session.—Trisha Carroll
(c) Walsh & Sattes, 2013