Questioning

How can we ask questions that make students think rather than just remember?

Math is a particularly tricky subject for asking higher-level questions. Here are a couple of techniques I’ve used to prompt students to think, not merely calculate.

High-level questions on their own simply aren’t enough. We must create sequences of questions!

Use these puzzling images to build a classroom culture that is comfortable with curiosity, ambiguity, and taking intellectual risks.

What would the pie chart look like for these three situations: the teacher asks the students, a student asks the teacher, or a student asks another student a question? I can tell you my pie chart would have been very lopsided.

Fixing an under-developed (but interesting) task that was originally part of a choice menu.

So students can identify a simile, metaphor, and hyperbole. What next?

I update an old question about conflict and character change in the story Hatchet.

How much time do students get to think? How much time do students need to think? How can we bring those into alignment?

How to improve questions at the “evaluate” level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

What will my students do after they’ve named the story’s genre?

How I’d upgrade a dull “which one is better” question.

This task is all about the product, but completely ignores how students will think.

How I’d update a low-level, overly engaging math question.

How I’d break down and rebuild a task about judging a volcano.

Let’s fix these nine, underdeveloped discussion questions!

I’d show a quote and then ask, “What does this quote mean?” And that was it!

Why was I asking five, unrelated, low-level questions in a row?

When we want students to memorize two terms, we actually shouldn’t aim for memorization!

Rather than just “paraphrasing” a poem, what if we did a cover version?