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5 Ways to Help Your Students Become Better Questioners

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5 Ways to Help Your Students Become Better Questioners

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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The Question Game
by Sophie Wrobel, geist.avesophos.de

The Question Game: A Playful Way To Teach Critical Thinking
Big idea: Teaching kids to ask smart questions on their own
A four-year-old asks on average about 400 questions per day, and an adult hardly asks any. Our school system is structured around rewards for regurgitating the right answer, and not asking smart questions - in fact, it discourages asking questions. With the result that as we grow older, we stop asking questions. Yet asking good questions is essential to find and develop solutions, and an important skill in innovation, strategy, and leadership. So why do we stop asking questions - and more importantly, why don't we train each other, and our future leaders, to ask the right questions starting from early on?

In A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas, Warren Berger suggests that there are three main questions which help in problem solving: Why questions, What If questions, and How questions.

Regardless of the question, the question needs to be phrased openly and positively in order to achieve positive results - a closed or negative question only raises bad feelings against each other.

Why questions help to find the root of a problem

What If questions open up the floor for creative solutions

How questions focus on developing practical solutions

So, perhaps, this lesson can be adapted to help trigger young children to start solve problems early too and stop accepting whatever the kindergarten teacher says to be fact? And perhaps, continue to keep up these inquiring and probing abilities later on in life?
Learning Goal: A Pattern Of Critical Thinking
The Question Game focuses on teaching children a kind of thinking which is particularly useful in creative problem-solving-a focused approach to get from a problem to the most effective solution. It is most effective when combined with regular repetition, which solidifies the thought pattern, and with groups, which encourages contributory exploration of alternative responses and creativity.

Thinking strategy is just one of many qualities that are necessary for imparting charisma and leadership skills to the next generation. Many of us would claim that we don't have the 'natural gift' that charismatic leaders like Nelson Mandela or Mahatma Ghandi had. However, charisma and leadership are qualities that, to a large extent, can be cultivated and trained. With soft skills becoming more important in today's job market, cultivating these skills early on can provide children with an additional edge in becoming effective, active citizens in our society. These skills can be broadly grouped into four logical skills and four emotional skills:

Logical skills: risk-taking, thinking strategy, creativity, and negotiation.

Emotional skills: persuasion, emotional connection, body language, and dealing with vulnerability.

Introducing The Question Game Preparation: print out the figure in the illustration, cut it out and glue the tabs together to form a cube.
Of these eight skills, the Question Game focuses on thinking strategy and creativity, and aims to solidify the critical thinking thought pattern from an early age onwards.
Evaluating Learning Progress

1. One simple idea is to pick up your favorite illustrated fairy tale book-the kind of book you'd read a two-year-old for bedtime stories. (This also works with most fictional works; the natural 'break point' for questions is at the end of a plot development or paragraph for older audiences.)

2. On each page, roll the cube and answer the question together. I'll bet you'd be surprised by what turns Little Red Riding Hood can take. And more importantly after a while you and your child will both start asking these questions reflexively.

My personal experience introducing the game to my two children (aged Pre-K) is a gradual acceptance of the game and associated learning goals:
Sophie Wrobel is a mother of two and independent information consultant with no pedagogic background. She runs a technology-oriented blog at avesophos.de and a self-improvement blog at geist.avesophos.de; The Question Game: A Playful Way To Teach Critical Thinking; image attribution flickr user usarmycorpofengineers

1. Initial excitement: Rolling the cube puts the child in control and made a fun addition to reading their picture books; they couldn't wait for their turn to roll the cube.

2. Distress: The questions are hard, especially when they aren't used to this sort of thinking pattern and are accustomed to the 'teacher knows everything' thinking pattern. Here, my children often asked if we could read ‚without the cube', or ‚I don't want to roll, but ___ can roll and answer the question.'

3. Acceptance: As they start to recognize that there isn't a single correct answer, and they begin to understand what each question is trying to achieve, they begin to enjoy the game and insist that we read 'with the cube'.

4. Application: During more abstract conversations, discussions, or observing how the children go about solving day-to-day problems during play. Example: a particular lego construction doesn't quite work, even though it was‚ built according to instructions'-and the child goes about investigating what is wrong and fixing it himself. Another example: When they ask me questions and I give them answers that obviously don't make sense, I get more pointed questions than just 'why?' as a response.

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The Question Game: A Playful Way To Teach Critical Thinking

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The Question Game by Sophie Wrobel, geist.avesophos.de The Question Game: A Playful Way To Teach Critical Thinking Big idea: Teaching kids to ask smart questions on their own A four-year-old asks on average about 400 questions per day, and an adult hardly asks any.

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Why Questions Are More Important Than Answers

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Why Questions Are More Important Than Answers

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Why Questions Are More Important Than Answers
by Terry Heick

Imagine the dogged pursuit of a proper clock-maker, day after day bound up in design and measurement and function and orderly thinking, forcing exactitude on little bits of metal that never asked for it. And then finally getting it right-so many decisions and matters of design suddenly set the clock off ticking forever.

Get inside the mind of a clock-maker-one who still experiments with matters of design, improving their craft with minor revisions of planning and execution-and suddenly you're seeing from ground zero how things come to be, first in a humble glow, then a blinding white starlight that bleaches everything.

There's a lesson here. But first, some background on questions-and bad questions, specifically.
The Irony of Bad Questions
Briefly put, questions are more important than answers because questions seek and frame and expose while answers, at their best, are temporary responses whose accuracy changes and shift and decays over time, needing to be reformed and remade and reevaluated as the world itself changes.

Of course, questions need to be updated too. And like 'wrong' answers, there can be bad questions. There is an irony to bad questions, in that they can be more difficult to answer than a good question.

Questioning is the art of learning. Learning to ask important questions is the best evidence of understanding there is, far surpassing the temporary endorphins of a correct 'answer.'

So what makes a question bad? Well, that depends on what you think a question should "do."

Produce a nice and tidy answer?

Cause a student to reconsider a position?

Force someone to go back and look more closely at how they know what they know?

Assess understanding?

All make sense, and a good question can do all of that.

But a bad question? They halt, freeze, deflate, and derail thinking.
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Simply put, bad questions are confusing questions.

That's not to say that good questions shouldn't be challenging and that students might not hit a spot where they feel confused. They might. But a challenged learner and a confused learner are not the same.

It's not all about 'rigor' either. Bad questions can be rigorous-force learners to think on higher-level planes-synthesis, evaluation, close analysis-and still be bad.
The Hallmark of a Bad Question
A bad question can be judged so because it gets at the wrong content, is full of unnecessary jargon, or is syntactically corrupt.

But more than anything else, the most telling hallmark of a bad question is that it encourages learners to guess what the teacher's thinking.

To try to get into the mind of the question-maker.

This, mind you, is decidedly different than understanding the mind of a clock-maker. A clock's design inspires design thinking. What that clockmaker was thinking matters.

But a question maker is not a clock-maker-different, at best only a mediator between the student and content. Their intent can be noble, well-researched, and justified, but the maker cannot-or should not-linger like a good question.

There is also the troubling matter of timing. Ask even the right question at the wrong time, and rather than front-loading, priming, scaffolding, or causing curiosity, students end up bewildered, their thinking scattershot, internalizing all the wrong things-social expectation, tempting recall, your relationship with them, or their own anxiety with the content.

Rarely, though, do they sit with the content and its context and metacognition, but rather the question itself and the false promise of a correct response.
The Abstraction of the Question
The right question at the right time can make a learning experience, because more than anything read, drawn, or even written, a question is acute and properly troubling. It creates a needle-point of light even as it suggests darkness.

Even if it's multi-part and inclusive, it's somehow singular.

It jabs and fingers at a learner's mind, then burrows in like a drill.

A bad question is sloppy-it doesn't burrow anywhere, but bangs around and makes a troubling noise. It forces the learner to come to the question and frown and decode. Decoding can be cognitively demanding and thus helpful, but not if it mars the student's thinking.

A precise, well-timed question keeps the learner in the content, in their own mind, in the mind of model thinking-in the mind of the clock-maker and not the question-maker.

A bad question also creates the illusion of an end-point to thinking-of the student having arrived at some place where they understand the mind of the clock-maker. And when that happens, everything just kind of dissolves, and they sit passively and wait for another question, thinking they've won.

This, of course, is tragedy. The mind must never exhale, but grapple! Wrestle with a text, a concept, or a question until they've found a new question is better suited to the task. Taking a piece of literature, an engineering problem, or an ethical issue and reducing it to a series of question is a dangerous kind of reductionism.

Questions are links to other questions, and that's it. Little fragments of curiosity that get at the marrow of important issues that resonate and thrum and linger. Statements of opinion, answers, and other lies are fine, provided they move aside to let the questions through.

When you ask questions-on exams, in person, in your next Socratic discussion-insist on good questions. Great questions. Model their development. Revise their wording. Toy with their tone. Simplify their syntax or implications over and over again until the confusion has been bleached and there's only thinking left.

Until the question asks exactly what it should, and nothing more.

Lock the students out of your head-and away from guess-what-the-teacher's-thinking, proficiency, false confidence, and overly-simple labels of 'understanding.'

Instead, encourage them inside the mind of the clock-maker. Let them huddle, and sit in awkward silence.

Let them think you're a little bit crazy.

And then watch for the questions.

Watch for the glow.
This post has been updated from its original publishing in 2012; Why Questions Are More Important Than Answers

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Why Questions Are More Important Than Answers

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Why Questions Are More Important Than Answers by Terry Heick Imagine the dogged pursuit of a proper clock-maker, day after day bound up in design and measurement and function and orderly thinking, forcing exactitude on little bits of metal that never asked for it.

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Asking and Answering Questions About a Story: Reading Literature

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Using Visual Supports to Teach Students with ASD Across Environments

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Last week, I announced that I was going to begin a blog series on exploring the ELA standards. Today, I bring you the first blog post in the series. I am going to start with the first standard in Literature AND Informational domains.

[Ask and Answer Questions]

What are the Standards?

The ask and answer standard spans kindergarten, first, second, and third grade, as well as both domains (informational and literature). In fourth grade, the focus will shift to drawing inferences.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.1- With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.K.1- With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.1- Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.1.1- Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.1- Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate an understanding of key details in a text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.1 - Ask and answer questions to demonstrate an understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.3.1- Ask and answer questions to demonstrate an understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.

Five Key Tasks for Teachers:

1. Get students' prior knowledge on questioning with an anchor chart and lots of accountable talk.

Start with a simple anchor chart with the words "What is a question?" Have students record their answers on sticky notes and place them on the chart. Then, have a discussion about what questions are and why we intentionally use them when we are reading.

2. Distinguish between asking and answering questions.

Make sure students know how to ask a question and answer a question. Teaching students to answer questions is much easier (at least for me) than teaching them to ask questions. Students have answered questions their entire lives. They know the skill of listening to the question and figuring out the answer. The skill of reading a text and asking questions before, during, and after is a tough skill in teaching.

Try with a very basic fictional text that they know well, such as The Three Little Pigs or Goldilocks. Have them create a few questions and answer a few questions with a partner. If you're studying informational texts, show images of items and ask them to create questions based on the pictures. Or find a popular topic that primary students like, such as dinosaurs or sharks and ask questions for them to answer.
(Printables taken from my RL2.1 unit.)
Using passages and real fiction/nonfiction stories is very important for kiddos to get practice. Whether you're teaching them to ask about an informational topic or a fictional story they just read, students will need to learn how to answer text-based questions and ask questions based on pictures and events in the text.

3. Distinguish between thick and thin questions.
(Anchor chart from my RI.1.1 and RI.2.1 mini-lesson)
Whether they're called thick, thin, strong, simple, or easy-peasy, teaching students to go DEEPER with their questioning is very important. Start by making an anchor chart and use the provided questions on the topic of sharks. Students have to decide if the question asked is a strong question or a simple question.
(Mini-Lesson Anchor Chart-toppers and Printable taken from my RL.3.1 unit.)
Students will need practice in defining the difference between strong and simple questions. However, you don't want to use the activity and stop there. As they work through asking and answering questions lessons (and even in day-to-day lessons), make sure that student's answers are always strong and text-based. Facilitate discussions around the asking and answering of questions, reinforcing good examples with praise and recording them on your charts!

4. Teach the text-based strategy.
(Activity taken from my RI.1.1 and RI.2.1 lesson)
Text-evidence is a huge skill for primary students. Teaching them how to find an answer by looking back in their text will help them throughout middle school, high school, and college. The more they practice, the stronger they will get.

(Passage and Questions taken from RL.3.1 and RI.1.1)
These skills can be scaffolded so that students truly master the skill. Start with guided prompts that require students to color/underline/highlight text evidence for specific questions or skills. Later, as students have picked up this skill, prompt them to note the text evidence on their own.

5. Let them practice in many different ways.

While passages and comprehension questions are always a huge skill for students to master, we don't want to limit them to the same activity each day. During my centers and small group activities, I would try to use task cards and interactive notebook activities to help practice the same skill while still changing things up.
(Task cards taken from RL.2.1, Interactive Notebook Template taken from RL.2.1) Ideas for Practice:

Turn and Talk activities, whole group

Task Cards

Interactive Notebooks

Passages

Read to Self Self-Checking Cards

Read to Someone Self-Checking Cards

Mentor Texts for Ask & Answer Questions

Need some strong read alouds and mentor texts for this standard? All the books that are linked below are linked to affiliate Amazon links.

Ask and Answer Questions (RL1.1, RL2.1, RL3.1)

Key skills to hit: questioning, inferring, predicting

Ask and Answer Questions (RI.1.1, RI.2.1, RI.3.1)

Key skills to hit: answering text-dependent questions and asking strong questions for more information

Do you want your own Deconstructed Ask & Answer Worksheet?

We recently did a deep dive into the ask-and-answer standard by deconstructing it and discussing the important elements of this ELA standard. To read more about it, head over to that blog post by clicking here!

Resources That Are Ready to Go!

If you're looking for ask & answer lessons that are ready to go, these grade-level units have everything you need! Click your grade level for a closer look!

Here are the ask & answer units for informational texts, too!

This blog post is the first post in a blog series! Next up is retelling and recounting!

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Teaching Students How to Ask and Answer Questions (Exploring ELA)

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Help students master Ask & Answer. Find teaching activities, anchor charts, lesson plans, ideas, tips, and more!

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Description

One assumption that many teachers make is that a student who is a proficient reader of literature will, in turn, be a proficient reader of expository texts. That is not necessarily so.

The trouble that many good readers of literature tend to have with expository texts has to do, in part, with text structure. Text structure refers to how the text is organized. For example, a text might present a main idea and then details, a cause and then its effects, an effect and the causes, two different views of a topic, etc.

While most pieces of fiction follow the same or similar general organizational patterns, different expository texts can have very different text structures. Therefore, it is important to teach students to recognize common text structures found in expository texts.

Purpose

Teaching students to recognize common text structures found in expository texts can help students monitor their comprehension. Attempting to identify the text structure early on in the reading of a new text encourages the reader to question how subsequent sections of the text fit into the identified text structure.

If a subsequent section does not seem to fit into that text structure, the reader is faced with one of two possibilities. Either the reader needs to reevaluate the choice of text structure, or he or she needs to reevaluate his or her understanding of the text. Either way, the process of identifying the text structure will encourage the reader to monitor his or her comprehension of the text.

How to Teach Readers to Use Text Structure

Introduce the idea that expository texts have a text structure. Explain to students that expository texts (such as the text in their science and social studies textbooks) have different organizational patterns. These organizational patters are called text structures.

Introduce the following common text structures. Explain that text structures can often be identified by certain signal words.

Description/List Structure

This structure resembles an outline. Each section opens with its main idea, then elaborates on it, sometimes dividing the elaboration into subsections.

EXAMPLE: A book may tell all about whales or describe what the geography is like in a particular region.

For example, for instance, specifically, in particular, in addition

Cause and Effect Structure
In texts that follow this structure, the reader is told the result of an event or occurrence and the reasons it happened.

EXAMPLE: Weather patterns could be described that explain why a big snowstorm occurred.

Consequently, therefore, as a result, thereby, leads to

Texts that follow this structure tell about the differences and similarities of two or more objects, places, events or ideas by grouping their traits for comparison.

EXAMPLE: A book about ancient Greece may explain how the Spartan women were different from the Athenian women.

However, unlike, like, by contrast, yet, in comparison, although, whereas, similar to, different from

Order/Sequence Structure
Texts that follow this structure tell the order in which steps in a process or series of events occur.

EXAMPLE: A book about the American revolution might list the events leading to the war. In another book, steps involved in harvesting blue crabs might be told.

Next, first, last, second, another, then, additionally

Show examples of paragraphs that correspond to each text structure.

Examine topic sentences that clue the reader to a specific structure. Look for the signal words that are associated with each text structure.

Model the writing of a paragraph that uses a specific text structure.

Have students try writing paragraphs on their own that follow a specific text structure. Writing paragraphs that follow certain text structures will help students recognize these text structures when they are reading.

For students who are proficient with paragraph organization, do steps 3 -6 with longer chunks of text or entire chapters and articles.

For more information see: Simonsen, S. (1996). Identifying and Teaching Text Structures in Content Area Classrooms. In D. Lapp, J. Flood, & N. Farnan (Eds.), Content Area reading and Learning: Instructional Strategies (2nd ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

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One assumption that many teachers make is that a student who is a proficient reader of literature will, in turn, be a proficient reader of expository texts. That is not necessarily so. The trouble that many good readers of literature tend to have with expository texts has to do, in part, with text structure.

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What could we do to improve Education.com? Please note: Use the Contact Us link at the bottom of our website for account-specific questions or issues. What would make you love Education.com? What is your favorite part about Education.com? Submit Form

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This is a great activity to spice up book talk. Students love to roll a dice and find out what they are going to be discussing next. The chart comes in 2 colors options. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email us at playfulinprimary@gmail.com and check out our website for tons of literacy center ideas:
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FREEBIE! Roll and Chat: Reading Comprehension Dice Game

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This is a great activity to spice up book talk. Students love to roll a dice and find out what they are going to be discussing next. The chart comes in 2 colors options. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email us at playfulinprimary@gmail.com and check out our website for tons ...

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1st Grade Reading Standard for Literature

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1st Grade Reading Standard for Literature

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Academic Standard: RL.1.1
Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

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Finding Key Details - grade 1 anchor chart: main idea, characters, … | Reading strategies anchor charts, Kindergarten anchor charts, Reading anchor charts

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Oct 31, 2016 - Finding Key Details - grade 1 anchor chart: main idea, characters, events, setting #reading #readingcomp #anchorchart

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Activities to Teach Key Details and Main Ideas

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Activities to Teach Key Details and Main Ideas

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How to Teach Key Details and Main Idea - Babbling Abby

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Teaching key details and main idea can be a challenge, but this series of lessons breaks it down, with practical strategies for teaching them effectively.

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Teaching and Assessing with Graphic Organizers

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Teaching and Assessing with Graphic Organizers

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Teaching the questioning strategy for comprehension is always a tricky one. This year, I came up with a little game to motivate my students to use this strategy.

First, I introduced the strategy with this anchor chart (minus the sticky notes):

(that's supposed to be a track on the question mark...)

I modeled the strategy with "think alouds" as I read a story. After modeling the types of questions you could ask while reading (and how this helped my comprehension), I introduced the game. I called it Guess my Question. This got my more competitive kids paying attention! I read a book aloud, then stopped at certain places and said, "Guess my question." I would call on kids until they came up with a question that would make sense for that part in the story. This game got kids to really think about potential questions to ask while reading.

I made this for my students to record questions they had while reading.

I chose the speech bubbles because they matched my sticky notes on my anchor chart.

You could use this as an independent activity for students, or you could use a more guided approach by using this with another read aloud. You could stop at places in the story, and have students write a possible question for that part (similar to the game, "Guess my Question"). This could also be used as an assessment to see how well your students are grasping this strategy.

I used this with my guided reading groups today. We read a book from readinga-z called The Cinnamon Bun Mystery. I stopped them occasionally and we brainstormed possible questions we may have. I encouraged them to find the answers to the questions we asked by reading on. For example, there is a place in the story where the main character gets to the bakery and a lady had just bought all of the cinnamon buns. Possible questions we came up with were: why would she buy all of them? who bought all of them? I wonder if she's going to eat all of them herself? After reading on, we found the answer to all of those questions. I reminded students that by questioning we kept our comprehension on track!

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Teaching Questioning as a Comprehension Strategy - Sarah's Teaching Snippets

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Teaching the questioning strategy for comprehension is always a tricky one. This year, I came up with a little game to motivate my students to use this strategy. First, I introduced the strategy with this anchor chart (minus the sticky notes): (that's supposed to be a track on the question mark...)