A common therapy goal is for a child to increase comprehension skills as measured by their ability to answer questions. It is important, however, to consider the type of question that is being asked. There is a difference between ” Who broke the chair in the Three Bears ?” from ” Why do you think Goldilocks went into the Bear’s home ?” If you measure these two questions, in the same way, you will have an inaccurate measurement. A child might be able to do all the concrete questions and not be able to answer the inference questions. One way to determine the complexity of the questions is to use Bloom’s Taxonomy questions.
Know that asking students questions during passage reading has proven effective in improving the comprehension of students. These are not the same as asking a student questions after you have finished reading the story.
Refer to Bloom Taxonomy to determine your question type
Another way to look at it is:
Memory Questions (who, what, when, where)
Convergent Thinking Questions (why, how, in what ways)
Divergent Thinking Questions (imagine, suppose, predict if/then)
Evaluative Thinking Questions (defend, judge, justify, what do you think)
Another way you will see Common Types of Comprehension Questions classified is:
1. LITERAL QUESTIONS
These are the easiest to score as the answers are clearly and explicitly stated in the passage.
Question: What was the name of the little girl in the story Three Bears?.
2. CAUSE AND EFFECT QUESTIONS
Such questions generally begin with the word “Why”. Children have to read the passage clearly to find either the cause or the effect.
Example
Question: Why did Goldilocks not eat the Papa Bears porridge? (effect)
Answer: It was too hot. (cause)
Question: Why were the villagers running everywhere? (effect)
Answer: The hurricane was approaching their village. (cause)
Cause and Effect questions can also appear in other forms. Sometimes, children need to find the effect of the cause.
Example
Question: What would happen when the giant was angry? (cause)
Answer: He would eat one of the villagers whenever he was angry. (effect)
3. INFERENTIAL QUESTIONS
This is the type of questions that are generally more challenging for most students. The answers are not clearly stated in the passage but are usually implied by the author. Children need to learn to draw conclusions from what they have read in the passage in order to answer such questions.
Let’s use the familiar story of The Three Little Pigs to illustrate this point.
Passage:
The first pig built a house of straw while the second pig built his house with sticks. They wanted to build their houses very quickly so that they could go out and party. They sang, danced and ate all day because they were lazy. The third little pig worked hard all day and built his house with bricks.
Question: Why do you think the third pig built his house with bricks?
If the answer is not explicitly stated in the passage, children would then need to rely on subtle phrases or clues found in the passage to find the correct answer.
In this case, the clue to the answer would be that the third little pig worked hard all day. This implies that he was a hardworking pig.
So, a correct answer would be:
He was a hardworking pig.
Many children would probably answer by simply copying the entire sentence from the passage:
The third little pig worked hard all day and built his house with bricks.
That answer would be marked wrong because it does not show whether they have understood the question, which is an inferential one.
Children need to be given ample practice with inferential questions in order to develop the skills to answer them. Teachers need to spend time teaching kids such skills.
4. VOCABULARY QUESTIONS
This type of question requires the child to understand the meaning of a word or phrase, using contextual clues.
[embeddoc url=”https://prakovic.edublogs.org/files/2015/06/blooms_taxonomy_action_verbs-s9gia0.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]
List of measurable verbs from Clinton Community College
Tips for asking questions:
- Provide wait time: pausing allows a student time to process the question and formulate an answer. You want to have all students thinking of the answer and not just the student that can quickly respond.
- Dignify responses: Give credit for the correct aspects of an incorrect response including the thought process.
- Restate the question:
- Rephrase the question: Sometimes the wording of the question may be what is confusing a student.
- Provide guidance: Give enough hints and clues so that the student will eventually determine the correct answer.
I love it when comments give additional information. Rachael, a graduate student at Providence College, shared this great graphic that she has displayed on her desk in her classroom.
Reflect on your own use of questioning. What changes given this information might you incorporate into your classroom/therapy?
Related Blogs
- Using Bloom’s Taxonomy in the Supervision of Graduate Students
- Developing a Literature Unit, Tier Two Vocabulary, Bloom’s Questions
- Listening Comprehension versus Reading Comprehension
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Throughout my practicum experiences at Salve, I had some really great professors; however, there is one that truly pushed me outside my comfort zone and taught me some really great strategies in regards to teaching literacy. Not only was she so knowledgable on the topic but she also had a tremendous passion for it and in turn, I began to develop a love for teaching literacy. During my literacy placement, we were required to create extensive lesson plans which focused on phonics skills, making words, strategies and skills (i.e. inferencing, visualizing,etc.), IRAs, writing, etc. My favorite part was most certainly the read aloud portion of the lesson and when introducing a read aloud, I would incorporate the higher level critical thinking questions, such as Bloom’s Taxonomy into my small group discussion. I would do so in order to get the students thinking and activate their prior knowledge as well as “hook” the readers. Depending on the targeted skill for the lesson, I would utilized each section from the Bloom’s Taxonomy questions into the read aloud as I went along and stopped at particular passages or pages in the story. For instance, we read a story called “See the Ocean” and its about a little girl who is blind. I asked my students to infer why the other brothers were telling and explaining to the girl what the ocean really looks like when she provided them with her own version or opinion of the ocean. I included serval questions like these as well as asking the students to identify alternative endings for the book, make a judgment based on the book, as well as agree or disagree with the characters and or their actions, etc. I also used the story “See the Ocean” to have the students listen to how the little girl explained what she thought the ocean looked like and have them draw out their own version before looking at the pictures from the story. I then asked the students to share their sketches with the group and explain as well as support their reason for drawing their ocean the way they did and how it relates to the author’s words. Here I was able to incorporate the skill of visualizing and engage the students in higher order questioning, which was very successful. I continue to use Bloom’s Taxonomy questions in the classroom and always refer back to the “cheat sheet” of verbs, sentences starters, and example questions to help me if I am having trouble when thinking of the right question to ask for a lesson. In addition to this, I have used Bloom’s Taxonomy in the teaching reading to students with special needs course here at PC while engaging a student in a close reading of Amelia Bedelia. I found this to be very effective and supported the student’s comprehension of the idioms present throughout the story as well as the reasons behind her actions, and to determine her character and identify corresponding character traits. Finally, although I have had many opportunities to engage in Bloom’s Taxonomy questioning, I feel that I am still not an expert. The more I practice and discover new questions that are effective when supporting student’s comprehension, the more comfortable and confident I feel. I think that I will continue to improve my skills throughout every opportunity I take advantage of. Lastly, my favorite part about utilizing and being knowledgable about the higher order thinking questions is when I ask the students a question or questions that I had not planned on and it ends up being so influential in regards to the students’ learning.
As a teacher blooms taxonomy is something that I’ve heard about and incorporated into my teaching. In reading the resources provided, I think incorporating some diversity in the questions I ask will provide my students with multiple types of questions at each level and not consistently the same ones. The different key words, questions, and assessments provided as examples for each stage has given me some great idea on how I can change up questions. Another thing I thought might be cool to do is have a chart posted in my room showing these different levels and getting the kids involved with knowing which level they are at. I work with students at the high school level and sometimes I find they are perfectionists and want to get everything right, so when they get to something they struggle with they automatically raise their hand for help from me. I have been trying to teach them some problem solving strategies to do before they ask the teacher in order to help them gain some independence. If they noticed that a question I asked them was on one of the more difficult levels of blooms they may be okay with a little bit of struggle and recognize that this is a harder question.
In my classroom, I really like to use questioning. I often like to start our content portion of the class after check in and housekeeping with a question that will help students start thinking about what were are going to be talking about in class or about something we discussed last class as a refresher. What I have realized is that yes, I do ask a lot of questions of my students that require them to access their prior knowledge to answer the question. But it has made me think about the types of questions I ask. Am I asking questions that are, as I used to call them, “HOT words”, or higher order thinking questions? Or are they basic questions that only require a recall of information, not the interpretation or application of their knowledge?
I also thought of various areas of questioning that I can work on going forward. I believe one area I can really improve upon is my effective guidance for a student when they are answering a question. For example, I can think of multiple times where I would ask a question and multiple students weren’t really answering the question correctly. I would say things such as “close, but not quite” or “almost” but did not supply guidance that would help support them in discovering the correct answer on their own. This is something I could really work on. Another thing I could work on is wait time. I honestly believe that due to the pressure that teachers have to fill timelines for content, we often don’t give enough wait time for students to answer our questions. We assume that in 3 seconds, students should be able to process our questions to the point where they understand it, and then be able to access their knowledge to form an answer, and then be able to say the statement out loud. Those short seconds we give them are not enough time to even process the question, let alone think of an answer and produce it. This is definitely something I need to work on, as I only feel it will help my students and help them gain confidence in their abilities as they have time to answer questions correctly and fully.
We took a really good look at Blooms questioning model in the reading class. I noticed that I was asking some higher level thinking questions, but not nearly enough. I took this into consideration and started asking my students more reflective and inferencing questions. While reading the Boy In The Striped Pajamas, I asked my kids “Why did the author decided to make the main character so innocent” and “why does the main characters parents choose to hide what the camp is from him?” Another point I learned from the reading class was to leave out “why do you think” in your questions because I was using that a lot and that encourages students to not look back in the text and not analyze these characters as real people.
After introducing more of these types of questions to my class, I found that this was a real struggle for them. They had a hard time analyzing the motives of characters and treating them like people. I then began modeling these types of questions in class while we were reading aloud and noticed improvements in there analyzing skills and when they were writing about these characters.
I feel as though questioning is a strength of mine. I incorporate lots of questions throughout my teaching. I think the difficult part when it comes to questioning ios to read those higher order skills in the evaluation area. In order to incorporate more of this into my teaching I could be sure to prepare many questions ahead of time to include in my lesson.
This upcoming school year my goal is to incorporate more divergent and evaluative type of questions into my lesson plans. I find it beneficial for students to take a step back and consider different possibilities, inferring and predicting an outcome, and justifying their positions. I think these types of questions and prompts create a well-rounded student. Higher order critical thinking also increases their confidence levels because they’re defending their thoughts. I believe in academic risk-taking in my classroom where students aren’t afraid to try to answer and ask questions. I think there is a time when the teacher needs to ask remembering and understanding questions in the form of exit tickets and in mid-lesson. I think my students enjoy answering creating and evaluating types of questions. I also noticed that some of the ELL students in my class had a tough time answering higher level thinking questions, so it would require the teacher to rephrase some of the prompts to help guide the student into properly responding to the prompt.
Learning about using and developing Bloom’s Taxonomy questions in lessons has helped me to develop richer discussions and provide more meaningful feedback.
I find myself sometimes struggling to make sure I am asking those higher level thinking questions. My students have a difficulties expressing themselves and asking questions, so sometimes it is hard to generate discussions in my classroom; making it difficult to ask those higher level questions. Although I do not do this for every lesson, I think that it is important to create the questions beforehand. Many times I have an idea of what questions to ask my students, however, when the questions are “too easy,” my students become bored. In having a list of already written questions, you are not caught in the spotlight, wondering what to ask after the “easy” questions are answered. I really like the idea of having the visual on the teacher’s desk. Using this may help me generate those questions and prompt more whole group discussions.
Up until creating the lesson plan for this class, I had not spent much time forming different levels of questions for a read aloud based on Bloom’s Taxonomy. This is mostly due to me being a math teacher. I do not spend time planning ELA lessons or read alouds for my students. In the past when I have done read alouds, I was thinking of questions on the spot, not planning them ahead of time. In designing my lesson plan for this class, I went page by page through my book and create questions for each page. I also came up with questions once the read aloud was complete. Different questioning to different students allows to see and understand a lot about a student and how they process information and how, as a teacher, you can help them to understand better!Doing this ahead of time helped me to make sure that I was asking questions from each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy instead of just coming up with questions on the spot that did not hit all of the levels. I felt very confident when completeing my lesson with the student I observed this semester and in the future I will do this when planning for read alouds. I would start making Bloom’s Taxonomy questions a part of my classroom teaching.
Reviewing the concept of how to ask questions to assess my student’s comprehension led me to think about what other modifications I need to make within my teaching instruction. While preparing questions I try to think about what will engage my student’s participation and enhance their ability to do the same independently. After a read aloud, I will model questions and write them on large chart paper to provide students with a sample of suggested ideas to develop on their own.
When developing questions, I try to think of the main purpose of what I’m asking my students to comprehend from the text. Writing the question with the intended purpose in mind like looking at the story theme, character analysis, or sequence of events. It provides guidance for my students to pinpoint and know how to answer the question. Another consideration I think about is where to place stopping points for asking a question in a text to help students comprehend sections of a story. During a PD workshop, the presenter spoke about the Depth of Knowledge (DOK) chart which examines questions that are targeting levels of recall, skill/concept, strategic thinking, or extended thinking. I remember the presenter mentioning that higher-level thinking questions can be easier for students with weaker comprehension skills because it provides a wider platform to formulate a correct answer. This recommendation is something that I keep in mind when writing out higher-level thinking questions. Of course, my main goal when developing questions is to make sure it reinforces the comprehension piece and sustains the student’s attention throughout the text.
Although, in this blog I appreciate the suggested tip for providing wait time to allow a student to respond with their answer. It made me think about my ELL students who need the extra time to process their response to higher-level thinking questions. Yes, I do believe higher-level thinking questions can be easier for students because of the multitude of answers for their response. However, I think ELL students have a more difficult time due to their lack of background knowledge in life experiences. Another insight I found helpful was how a question is phrased can create confusion for the student to answer occasionally. Sometimes I find myself not thoroughly thinking out the process for developing a well written question at times. I ‘m aware of my own mistakes when the students ask me to rephrase the question for them. One suggested strategy I want to work on this school year is providing different approaches for students to answer higher level thinking questions. I would like to create a reference guide toolkit to help students learn how to respond to these questions and locate the answers in the text.
Learning about Blooms Taxonomy and the importance for developing questions with meaning in EDU 571, certainly has me rethinking about new approaches and strategies to use this coming school year.
Given this information I think that I would definitely make a couple of changes and incorporate them into my classroom. I find myself sometimes relying heavily on the lower level 1-2 questions. I find in my practice that these are the most foundational needs of students when it comes to understanding a text, and with that being said, I probably go overboard with reinforcing them.
One of the big things that I would like to incorporate more of could be divergent thinking questions. I think that these allow students to open their minds and place themselves in the shoes of the characters. I think for some students this can be very difficult, this I would make sure to prep my students who have needs beforehand so they would have time to prepare answer. Really, the same thing goes for evaluative thinking questions. I think that these are done best during and after a text.
Having a child defend a stand point and use textual evidence can be something very difficult for students of all ages to do. Many students will simply recite what they read as if it says it all. Yet, it takes a even high level of thinking to synthesize this into their own thoughts and come up with their own opinions. One way that I like to do this is through Socratic seminar. I think this will allow outgoing students to partake in the reading process during class and provide ample opportunity for students who are reluctant to speak great opportunities in the culminating activities.
I have been reflecting on my own use of questioning in the classroom. I know that some students have difficulties answering inference questions and it is easier for them to answer concrete questions with simple one word or one sentence answers. However, it is my job to try and have students work on harder, complex questions where they have to support their answer with evidence from text. I think that one way to work on questioning is to have students use the stop and think approach while reading. Stopping after a big idea, paragraph or page to ask students questions and to recap is a great way for students to use their questioning skills.
Many of my students struggle with cause and effect or making inferences, where they have to guess what will happen next. I have a student with autism and he will shut down when asked to answer these types of questions. In class last week it was suggested to have students look at a bag of things (for example: sun screen, sun glasses, shovel, hat ect) and have the students make a guess as to where we would be going. Once students get the hang of this they can bring in a bag of their own so that we can guess. I love this strategy and I know the kids will think it is very fun.
I love the light bulb to express higher order of thinking skills. My students start to have problems during application. When I teach a skill and we spend time working on as a whole group and then partners they do great but when asked to work independently they tend to fall apart. I am going to work on this during the upcoming school year. I also printed out the light bulb so I can use it when planning questions and questioning strategies.
There are some great ideas here!
In my last teaching assignment, I often discussed with my classroom special education teacher the difficulty my students have with comprehension questions. Literal questions they had little to no problems with because they knew how to find the answer to these questions in texts. Cause and effect most students could complete without great difficulty. Many could answer vocabulary questions as well using the rest of the sentence, picture and passages to help them figure out the meaning of the word. But as third graders they struggled greatly with inferential questions. Towards the nearing of parcc testing this back year we had a big push in reading to focus on inferential questions and help teach students strategies to help them answer these kinds of reading questions.
I would start making bloom taxonomy questions a part of my classroom teaching. To start asking more than just literal and cause and effect questions, and provide my students with strategies to answer inferential questions.
Comprehension is a huge part of my student’s day. With that, that staff is ALWAYS trying to develop ways to ask and answer questions to a text. We have developed multiple ways of questioning, different leveled groups, different strategies to answer questions, and devoted a lot of time to working with out students.
This year, we found, like the article stated, that is most difficult question for our students to answer was inferential. We use a formula to help them remember what is expected of them in an inferential answer. To help them remember, there are posters around the room, and when they are writing their responses they have it written at the top of their paper, so they can check it off as they go. We use RACER. R=respond to the question, A=Answer the question, C=cite text evidence, E=explain your answer using schema, and R=restate the question. This did seem to be successful for many students of may different levels. We did find that with answering an inferential question, the area that seemed to stump most kids was using schema. I work with 6-7 year olds, so schema on certain topics, is due to the fact that they have not experienced different things in life!
Different questioning to different students allows to see and understand a lot about a student and how they process information and how, as a teacher, you can help them to understand better!
Reflecting on my own practice, there is more I can do to improve upon my questioning techniques I use in the class. Currently, I mostly use memory and convergent thinking questions, occasionally using evaluation thinking questions. Some of my deeper thinking questions come in Geometry where a majority of the content is about using a proof to explain a problem or justifying your answer. I would like to incorporate more types of questioning in my classroom to have students understand the concepts beyond just the basic content. Also, I would like students to begin using these questioning techniques on each other to get them to think deeper.
At the high school level there is always a few students who are quick to answer questions, usually the higher level students. In these classes I need to practice giving students wait time, for example 5 seconds, to be able to process the information and be able to respond so all students have the ability to respond accordingly. Another way I need to practice is restating or rephrasing questions. In math, many questions deal with vocabulary so being able to break down the vocabulary words will help students better understand the question and ultimately be able to answer the question.
I have started to use some of this in practice in the calculus class I am teaching for student who will be taking the AP exam next year. Instead of just asking for the answer, after they do so I asked how they found the solution as other students in the class may have not arrived at the answer the same way. One drawback of this was that sometimes the students were confused because they thought they did the question wrong but I just wanted them to think deeper. Once the students got used to me questioning their technique they became more comfortable in the classroom.
Up until now, I have not spend a large amount of time forming different levels of questions for a read aloud. This is largely due to being a math teacher so I do not spend time planning ELA for my students. However, when I have done read alouds I have thought of questions on the spot, instead of ahead of time. This means that I usually asked remembering and understanding questions from Bloom’s Taxonomy. In designing the lesson plan for this class I was able to go through the book page by page to think of questions to ask throughout the book and then once the read aloud was complete. Doing this ahead of time meant that I could make sure I would ask questions from all levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
In the future when I teach literacy I will take the time to think of a question from each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy to see what kinds of questions my students are able to answer and which levels they need more practice with. I will also have question starters for each level of Bloom’s visible in my classroom to continue incorporating each level when I am unable to plan out questions ahead of time. I know that my cohort last year struggled the most with inferential questions so I would also want to have question starters that give practice in answering inferential questions. I know how important wait time is after asking a question, especially for ELL learners, so I will begin getting in the habit of counting to “6 Mississipi” after asking a question before I rephrase or give a hint.
Excellent plan and reflection, you have also given me an idea for a new blog about questions in the math classroom. There are the same issues in that some of the questions will be the basic questions (what is the solution to the problem) while others will have the student using some higher level thinking skills and probes how the student came to the solution.
When I first began teaching, I quickly realized that using various questioning techniques in the classroom was difficult but extremely important. I remember my first evaluation and how my principal told me that I needed to work on my questioning techniques. I just graduated from Salve that year, so I realized I needed to go back to my education binders where I had the wheel of Bloom’s Taxonomy in one of my folders.
I then used the vocabulary wheel to help me create questions. The first evaluation, I received a “2” on Questioning. The next evaluation, I received a “3” and my final evaluation, I received a “4”! I was extremely happy in myself to reflect on my practices and improve them using the resources I was already given. Sometimes, the amount of resources in college that are given to you in an education class are overwhelming. I never thought there could be too many strategies or resources, however, sometimes it can be hard to determine which ones to use.
I like the way this article laid out the different questions into categories:
1. Literal Questions
2. Cause and Effect Questions
3. Inferential Questions
4. Vocabulary Questions
I also think the colorful “critical thinking skills” organizer is extremely useful. I like the sentence starters and it can really assist a teacher in scaffolding a student’s learning. I believe we have to begin at the knowledge questions and teach students how to eventually answer the evaluation questions. The higher we go up on the “questioning ladder,” I believe their reading comprehension will also increase. I will use these sentence starters to create my questions for the read aloud lesson plan.
We want to try to get all kids to answer the evaluation questions, therefore, for each lesson plan, we should have at least 1 of each type of question. Therefore, we are differentiating to each student’s needs but also providing other students the opportunity to increase their reading comprehension by providing various levels of questioning.
Before I read this blog, I personally used this resource:
https://www.fractuslearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/blooms-taxonomy-verbs-feat.png
I hang this copy next to my desk and use it when I create my lessons
Rachael, thanks so much I have shared this now on the blog with reference to you!
For my student teaching experience at URI this past spring (2017), part of my evaluation was my use of Bloom’s Taxonomy questioning in the classroom during the lessons. At the end of the semester, I had to turn in 20 written out lesson plans and activities/ worksheets with questions using Bloom’s Taxonomy on those assignments. Because of this, I feel comfortable using Bloom’s Taxonomy questioning, and I always use Bloom’s Taxonomy when creating questions revolving around a lesson in the classroom. Along with this, creating different options for response rather than just question and answer material was very helpful in reaching all students abilities. Personally, when creating these lessons, I will use an image of blooms taxonomy as well as images of questioning words to help create questions using Blooms. In the future, I will definitely incorporate a poster with Bloom’s Taxonomy for all students to see. This visual may help students formulate their own ideas or ways to answer questions about the lesson we just completed as a class. I always found it interesting when getting to the higher up questions such as creating, evaluating, or analyzing. Students were able to formulate ideas that were so creative and different but efficient and effective ways of showing their knowledge of the topic. By giving a picture of blooms taxonomy, students may be able to visualize the importance of higher up thinking and want to think outside the box and be different when answering the questions rather than doing the same answers others are doing.
Another aspect I will add to the classroom is using Bloom’s Taxonomy higher order thinking options to create an assignment where students are able to use their strengths to create, design, criticize, or organize materials in their own ways. In doing so, students are able to choose their assignment making (them more motivated to complete the assignment), as well as think outside the box about the lesson facts and concepts learned show what they learned in their own creative piece. For example, after a lesson about dropping the first atomic bomb during WWII, students may be given the option to either create a newspaper article title and 5 bullet points about the bombing in both Japan and the US, or read a document about the arguments for and against dropping the bomb and criticize decisions made. This not only gives the students in the classroom options, but still has the students analyzing the lesson/ information learned to critically compare and contrast the information they learned at a higher order thinking level.
Finally, I will use the tip of giving more guidance on questions rather than answering part of the question for students. This tip is very important for students to learn, instead of answering part of the question and having students use process of elimination to answer the question. As a teacher I find that I will sometimes hurry up the question by giving part of the answer, when in reality I am not helping the student learn. In the future I will do my best to give more guidance rather than answering the question so that they student will still be learning.
This information made me question the questions I have been giving out in class. Although I try to use Bloom’s Taxonomy for every lesson, I will re-analyze the questions I have been using to make sure they have meaning, rather than just using questions that are only to use Bloom’s Taxonomy in the classroom. By creating relevant, higher order thinking questions about a topic or lesson, students will be engaged and creative in thinking of critical responses.
Love the idea about displaying the Bloom’s Hierarchy visual and encouraging more out of the box thinking for your students.
I use questioning in my classroom a lot. I like to get my students talking and thinking when we are doing a lesson. I like to use KWL charts in history class when we start new units. I ask them prior knowledge questions and also let them ask some questions of each other.
I also use questioning while we read in my skills reading class. We read books out loud together and they have reading journal where after we read they fill out their reading journal and answer three questions. 1.) Comprehension: What I know happened in the chapter? 2.) Synthesis: How did this chapter make we feel? Why? 3.) Prediction: What do I think will happen next? We do this for the whole book, even the last chapter. At the last chapter, I tell them for the prediction to write as if they were continuing the story.
I also use questioning in the classroom to check their understanding. I feel like questions can be great tools to use to get your students thinking and communicating with each other and yourself.
We do Close Reading too in class, I have hanging on my wall questions the students can ask themselves as they read. We do “Do I understand all the vocabulary in that paragraph?”, “Do I understand the main idea of the paragraph?” and “What questions do I have on what I just read” and I stop and do think-alouds with the students as we read to address the main idea question and answer any of their questions. For the vocabulary question, they write the words they don’t know in their reading journal to look up in the dictionary on their own.
This reading made think about the questioning I do and the reason I have behind the question. It was neat to learn the labels that go to the questions. Most times I don’t even realize I am using certain questioning techniques in my classroom. So as I was reading this, I was like “I use that kind of questioning” a lot. I will definitely be able to know incorporate questioning even better now that I have more types of questioning I can look to.
I feel like overall, this reading is a great resource to use for teachers. It definitely made me think more about questioning my students and more aware of the reason behind questioning them. It makes me ask myself why am I asking that question, which I think will help me determine which questions are important and which are just filler questions. I think it’s important to know why you are questioning the students and this reading helps you categorize your questioning so you can see why you are doing it.
I also loved the tips for questioning and will definitely be references those as I continue to teach. I do some of them, for example, I already provide wait time and try my best to pause with enough time to allow a student time to process the question and formulate an answer. I agree when it stated that you want to have all students thinking of the answer and not just the student that always answers quickly. But sometimes I forget do some these. One thing I definitely need to remember to do from the tips is the dignify responses tip. Sometimes don’t give credit for the correct aspects of an incorrect answer. I sometimes forget to consider the thought process more. So I copy and pasted the tips onto my computer and plan to print them out as a reference to tape on my desk to remind myself.
As a school, the educational staff was provided with professional development from the “Right Question Technique”, a program that assisted teachers in a training around the key elements to asking questions. In my classroom, I have a poster detailing bloom’s taxonomy. We have used it for various assignments, a main piece being when the students are writing or updating their resumes. Through various lessons, the students seem to have a strong idea of how the poster works, understanding that as they move up the ladder, the words become more descriptive and hold more value. I feel as though I have done done a great job asking my students different types of questions. In our social studies block,I feel like I am asking them primarily cause and effect questions. A lot of those answers are really open, causing the students to also work on their critical thinking skills. The “Right Question Technique” did teach me about ample wait time and supporting the students through reasking the question, sometimes rewording it as well.
Coming from a project based learning school, the students create a lot of their project work with the help and guidance of a mentor. When we are first brainstorming project ideas, we look under the top two tiers of bloom’s taxonomy for language and ideas related to their project work. Examples of this being utilized are when a student sees the value to measuring, creating and designing rather than telling, listing or summarizing involved in their project work. As much as I feel confident in how I work with my students and asking the right questions and the the process that goes along with it, this was a healthy refresher that I will want to go over again before going back to school in the fall.
This was interesting, thanks for sharing about your classroom.
Read – But I will definitely be using these guides for sure when I move to a new grade this year. I’ll be making a lot of new comprehension worksheets and activities for my new class so this will come in handy!
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Read, love this! Great resource!
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Thank you!!
Thank you!
Read, thank you!
This is great when considering how to evaluate for reading comprehension, especially for a child who is more low functioning – a question is not just a question!
Very useful, thank you!