critical thinking and questioning strategies matrix

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Questioning Strategies

Designing questions involves determining the purpose, and then selecting the most appropriate types of questions for that purpose. There are 4 key questioning strategies that can support teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom.

Table of Contents

4 key questioning strategies include:

• Designing higher level cognitive questions
• Developing a sequence of questions

Increasing wait time

Responding to answers using redirection, probing and reinforcement, questioning ideas and tactics.

• Hands down questioning
• Engaging all students questioning

It is important for teachers to be able to design different questions to meet different cognitive demands.

Higher cognitive questions are:

• interpretive
• inferential
• synthesis questions.

For example, asking students to manipulate bits of information previously learned to create an answer or to support an answer with logically reasoned evidence.

Lower cognitive questions are:

• knowledge questions.

For example, asking students to recall verbatim, or in their own words, material previously read or taught by the teacher.

Some frameworks and tools

There are several frameworks and tools available to assist the process of designing higher cognitive questions including:

• Weiderhold’s Question Matrix comprises 36 question starters asking what, where, when, which, who, why and how. These questions are asked in present, past and future tenses, ranging from simple recall through to predictions and imagination or single questions depending on the task.
• The Questioning Toolkit is a comprehensive range of question types based on McTigh & Wiggins’ essential questions.
• Thinker’s Keys is a strategy to develop creative and critical thinking, designed by Tony Ryan. There are 20 keys, or questions, that challenge the reader to compose their own questions and responses.
• Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning, Teaching and Assessing organises questions into 6 categories according to whether they involve knowledge, comprehension, analysis, application, synthesis or evaluation.
• De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats encourages students to look at a topic, problem or idea from more than one perspective, with each hat representing a different kind of thinking, encouraging new questions.

 Developing a sequence of questions

Consideration should be given to planning a sequence of questions in a lesson or for lessons over a period of time. This is to ensure that there is a range of questions that make increasingly challenging cognitive demands on students.

Scaffolding questions allows repetition without being repetitive. Each time you lead the students to a different level of question on a topic, students have the opportunity to revisit what they know and use it in a different way. This helps students to remember and at the same time, it keeps them engaged because you are not simply repeating the same question. Even though it is the same topic, it is new.

Closed questions are useful for establishing the core material of a unit, while open questions advance students into manipulating, extending and transforming this material. That is, ask knowledge and comprehension questions about new material before asking questions requiring analysis and evaluation.

Tips and tactics

When planning your lesson:

• create a spreadsheet/ table with concepts you wish to develop listed in the first column
• add 3 additional columns: knowledge/ comprehension, application/ analysis and synthesis/ evaluation
• write several questions for each column for each concept.

These actions provide you with: questions for building a vocabulary foundation of the concepts, questions for helping students relate to the new knowledge to what they know already, and questions to help students establish the value of this knowledge. It also creates a useful question bank for assessing student knowledge.

Students in small groups, answering all the questions from easy to hard, is an effective way to engage all students.

Research shows that increasing the wait time after questioning improves the number and quality of the responses – 3 seconds for a lower-order question and as much as 10 seconds or more for a higher-order question.

Pausing, or wait time, before and after asking, and after a response, encourages students to extend their answers.

Researchers on questioning strategies have identified 2 kinds of wait time:

• Wait time 1 refers to the amount of time the teacher allows to elapse after they have posed a question and before a student begins to speak.
• Wait time 2 refers to the amount of time a teacher waits after a student has stopped speaking before saying anything.

Research findings include:

• The average wait time teachers allow after posing a question is a second or less.
• Students whom teachers perceive as having learning difficulties are given less wait time than those whom teachers view as being more capable.
• For lower cognitive questions, a wait time of 3 seconds is most positively related to achievement, with less success resulting from shorter or longer wait times.
• There seems to be no wait time threshold for higher cognitive questions – students seem to become more and more engaged and perform better and better the longer the teacher is willing to wait.
• improvements in the student achievement
• improvements in student retention, as measured by delayed tests
• increases in the number of higher cognitive responses generated by students
• increases in the length of student responses
• increases in the number of unsolicited responses
• decreases in students’ failure to respond
• increases in the amount and quality of evidence students offer to support their inferences
• increases in contribution by students who do not participate much when wait-time is under 3 seconds
• expansion of the variety of responses offered by students
• decreases in student interruptions
• increases in student-student interactions
• increases in the number of questions posed by students.
• Give students 30 seconds to share their answer with a partner before feeding back – this also promotes confidence as it is a ‘joint effort’.
• Use teaching ideas such as think, pair, share or snowballing at key points for ‘big’ questions.
• Ask the question, move to another part of the room and repeat it before taking any answers.
• Set a timer, or ask a student to time the wait time.
• Play some thinking music.
• Point to a classroom sign that says: ‘THINK TIME’.

A positive response to any answer is essential, with the response falling into 2 broad categories:

• extending responses through follow on questions
• responding to incorrect/ inappropriate answers.

Professor Dylan Wiliam emphasizes the need to move away from IRE (initiate, response, evaluate) and to think more carefully about the way we ask questions and respond to students’ answers.

• Redirection and probing (often researched together) are positively related to achievement when they are explicitly focused, for example on the clarity, accuracy and plausibility of student responses.
• Redirection and probing are unrelated to achievement when they are vague or critical, for example ‘That’s not right – try again’ or ‘Where did you get an idea like that?’
• Acknowledging correct responses is positively related to achievement.
• Praise is positively related to achievement when it is used sparingly, is directly related to the student’s response, and is sincere and credible.

When extending responses through follow up on questions, or when responding to incorrect/ inappropriate answers, use Socrates’ probing questions. They include:

Questions for clarification:

• Why are you saying that?
• What exactly does this mean?
• How does this relate to what we have been talking about?
• What do we already know about this?
• Can you rephrase that, please?

Questions that probe assumptions:

Questions that probe reason and evidence:

• Why is that happening?
• How do you know this?
• Can you give me an example of that?
• How might it be refuted?
• Why is … happening?
• Why? (keep asking it – you’ll never get past a few times)
• What evidence is there to support what you are saying?
• On what authority are you basing your argument?

Questions about viewpoints and perspectives:

• Who benefits from this?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of…?
• How are … and … similar?
• What would … say about it?
• How could you look at this another way?

Questions that probe implications and consequences:

• What are the consequences of that assumption?
• How could … be used to …?
• What are the implications of …?
• How does … affect …?
• How does … fit with what we learned before?
• Why is … important?
• What is the best … ? Why?

Questions about the question:

• What was the point of asking that question?
• Why do you think I asked this question?
• Am I making sense? Why not?
• What else might I ask?
• What does that mean?

The following questioning ideas and tactics are from a range of sources and not in a particular order.

Select the questioning ideas and tactics that best suit your purposes. They are loosely organized into 2 categories:

• Engaging all students in questioning.

Hands down questioning:

• Whiteboards – students have small whiteboards at their desks or tables and write their ideas, thinking or answers on the whiteboard and then hold it up for teacher and/or peer scanning.
• Pose, pause, pounce, bounce – the teacher poses a question, pauses to allow students time to think, pounces on any student (keeps them on their toes!) and then bounces the student’s response onto another student. For example, Teacher: How might you describe a hexagon? Student: It’s a shape with 6 sides. Teacher: (to the second student) How far do you agree with that answer?
• Hinge questions – hinge questions are based on the critical concept in a lesson that students must understand before you move on in the lesson. A hinge question should fall about midway during the lesson, with every student responding to the question within 2 minutes. You must be able to collect and interpret the responses from all students in 30 seconds.
• Ask : questions should be prepared in advance in your lesson plan.
• Pause : let the students think about what you are asking by giving them 3-5 seconds to respond.
• Pick : pick a student by name to answer the question, do not always pick on the first student that raises their hand, and you can also pick someone that hasn’t raised their hand in order to force participation.
• Listen : listen to the answer, make eye contact with the student, provide praise and encouragement when the answer, or an aspect of the answer, is provided. Ensure you mix your effect words as nothing sounds phonier than a teacher that always says ‘very good’ whenever a student answers a question.
• Expound and explain : generate a dialogue based on the student’s response. If the student’s response was incorrect, redirect the question back to the other students with ‘That’s an interesting response, can anyone else provide a different answer?’

Engaging all students questioning:

1. Cold call :

• Name the question before identifying students to answer it.
• Call on students regardless of whether they have their hands raised, using a variety of techniques such as random calls, tracking charts to ensure all students contribute, name sticks or name cards.
• Scaffold the questions from simple to increasingly complex, probing for deeper explanations.
• Connect thinking threads by returning to previous comments and connecting them to current ones. In this way, listening to peers is valued, and after a student’s been called on, they remain part of the continued conversation and class thinking.

2. No opt-out  – requires a student to (eventually) correctly answer the question posed to them. When a student gives an incorrect or partial answer, call on other students for an answer – take a correct answer from students with their hands raised or cold call other students until the right answer is given – and then returning to the student who gave the incorrect or partial answer for a complete and correct response.

3. Think or ink pair-share :

• Students are given a short and specific timeframe (1-2 minutes) to think or ink (write) freely to briefly process their understanding/ opinion of a text selection, discussion question or topic.
• Students then share their thinking or writing with a peer for another short and specific timeframe, for example, a minute each.
• Finally, the teacher leads a whole-class sharing of thoughts, often charting the diverse thinking and patterns in student ideas. This helps both students and the teacher assess understanding and clarify student ideas.

4. Turn and talk  – when prompted, students turn to a shoulder buddy or neighbor in a set amount of time, share their ideas about a prompt or question posed by the teacher or other students. Depending on the goals of the lesson and the nature of the Turn and Talk, students may share some key ideas from their discussions with the class.

5. Hot seat  – the teacher places key questions on random seats throughout the room. When prompted, students check their seats and answer the questions. Students who do not have a hot seat question are asked to agree or disagree with the response and explain their thinking.

6. Fist-to-five or thumb-o’meter  – to show the degree of agreement or commonalities in ideas, students can quickly show their thinking by putting their thumbs up, to the side or thumbs down. Alternatively, they can hold up a fist, or place their hand near their opposite shoulder, for 0/ disagree or 1-5 fingers for higher levels of confidence or agreement.

7. ABCDE cards  – the teacher asks/ presents a multiple-choice question, and then asks students to simultaneously (“on the count of 3”) hold up 1 or more cards, labelled A, B, C, D or E, as their individual response.

8. Voter’s choice  – give students a choice of possible answers to a question and have a vote on the correct option.

9. Scatter questions  – scatter questions over the whole class and move around the room to ensure questions are evenly distributed. Often teachers question students in their direct line of vision so using scatter questions counters this.

10. Who has answered?  Distribute slips of paper or card at the beginning of the lesson, and as students answer a question, they hand over one of their cards. Teachers can clearly see who still has all their cards and can target an appropriate question. This technique also allows teachers to engage reluctant students, who may be given fewer cards.

11. Bouncing ball  – address a question directly to a named student, and keep others involved by asking them to consider what else they could add or whether they agree. For example, “John, do you think that Macbeth really wants to kill the King at this point? Sam, do you agree? What evidence can you find? Does anyone think something different?”

12. Audience choice  – ask a student who often answers to select 2 or 3 other students to answer – thus keeping them involved.

13. What’s the question?  “The answer is 42 – what could the question be?” or “The answer is Henry VIII, how many questions can you think of that this could answer?”

14. Quiz programs  – use quiz-program type/ formats on the whiteboard, for example, Who wants to be a millionaire, Family feud and so on.

15. Four corners  – students form 4 groups (vary the number as required) based on commonalities in their responses to a question posed. In their groups, students discuss their thinking and one student shares their ideas with the class. Students in other groups/ corners can move into that group/ corner if they change their thinking based on what they hear.

16. Thunks  – clever questions, or ‘thunks’ such as: “If I ask if I can steal your pen and you say yes, is that stealing?” Or “Can I ever step on the same beach twice?” are fun and thoughtful starters. They can be used simply to spark thinking or dialogue, or they can be more targeted towards the topic or the subject at hand.

New South Wales Government, n.d. Key Questioning Strategies From https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/professional-learning/teacher-quality-and-accreditation/strong-start-great-teachers/refining-practice/teacher-questioning/key-questioning-strategies#Questioning4  (CC BY)

• Cotton, K. (2001). Classroom Questioning. Retrieved October 26, 2014, from School improvement research series.
• Walsh, J. A., & Sattes, B. D. (2005). Quality Questioning: Research-Based Practice to Engage Every Learner. California: Sage Publications.

The Roles and Responsibilities of the Special Educator Copyright © by Paula Lombardi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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14 Oct The Q Matrix & Inquiry Based Learning

The Question Matrix is a useful tool to introduce a hierarchy of thinking. These relate to Blooms Taxonomy and is an element that is important to incorporate in education and our questioning strategies. The matrix is a visual representation of how to build stronger, higher order thinking questions. Creating questions with the prefix of examples in the upper left quadrant (level 1) are questions that often require lower order thinking, and produce superficial answers. The goal is to ask the questions at the bottom right corner of the matrix. These questions require high order thinking to produce answers that are deeper than surface level knowledge.

As we start at the top left corner, questions using “what is” represents the lower level thinking. Here’s an example:

“What colour is the sky?”

Answer: “The sky is blue.”

These are known as literal questions and require basic visual representation of the information.

Next, are inferential questions where students are required to infer or find hints from the information:

“Where would the sky get its blue colour from?”

Answer: “ Possibly from water… water is blue, reflective…Maybe out of space? Something to do with the sun? Sky is only blue in the day, not at night..”

As we move towards the bottom right corner, the same concept can be worded in a manner that encourages higher thinking, and requires more in-depth thinking, questioning and solving.

“Why might the sky be blue?”

“How might the sky be blue?”

Answering these questions will take research, multiple levels of thought and comprehension. It’s not about answering the question in as little words or as quick as possible, but going through the process of finding the answer:

A Google search turns up that (according to NASA ) “Sunlight reaches Earth’s atmosphere and is scattered in all directions by all the gases and particles in the air. Blue light is scattered in all directions by the tiny molecules of air in Earth’s atmosphere. Blue is scattered more than other colors because it travels as shorter, smaller waves.”

This solves the question and provides an answer, but what’s even better is it proposes more questions than it solves: “ What colour is the sun?” “What is Blue light?” “How do molecules scatter?” “What is the atmosphere?” “Why are the waves blue?”. This is how you begin to start inquiry-based learning and curiosity within your students.

Here’s how you can start inquiry-based learning in your classroom:

The Question:

Presentation:

Depending on the depth of the inquiry-based learning problem your students are taking on, have them do a presentation on their findings. This could be anywhere from a short presentation to an in-depth culminating activity. We also recommend that the presentation should have visuals to go with it, whether it’s a 3D rendition, powerpoint, video, graphic design or even better a combination one or more, the presentation and final product should be represented and shown visually.

Post-Project Reflection:

Ask student’s questions such as: what worked in their journey and what didn’t? Which pieces of information were the hardest to find? Did they learn anything unrelated through research? Has it s parked an interest in something else. Did they accomplish their goal and other self-reflecting questions? Hopefully, these can initiate curiosity for a new inquiry learning based project.

Maintain Records:

Hopefully, this project inspires both you and your students to practice inquiry-based learning throughout the school year. As an educator, keep a record of which subjects your students picked, and see if you can notice a trend. You may find that particular students really enjoy researching one discipline, subject, type of question. Follow up with students’ and get them to think ahead about their future in life and education.

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Questioning: The Ultimate Reading Strategy for Critical Thinkers

Questioning is a reading strategy that involves generating and answering questions before, during, and after reading to enhance comprehension. It helps readers to engage with the text, think critically, and retain information. This article will provide an overview of questioning as a reading strategy, discuss its formation and promotion, explore how it can help RTI students, and offer practical tips for implementing it in the classroom.

Overview of Questioning as a Reading Strategy

Questioning is a metacognitive reading strategy that involves actively engaging with the text by asking questions, seeking answers, and making connections between ideas. The strategy is divided into three stages: before, during, and after reading.

Before Reading: This stage involves generating questions before reading to help activate prior knowledge and set a purpose for reading. Questions could be related to the author, genre, topic, or theme of the text.

During Reading: This stage involves generating questions while reading to monitor comprehension, clarify understanding, and make predictions. Questions could be related to the meaning of unfamiliar words, the main idea, or the author's purpose.

After Reading: This stage involves generating questions after reading to evaluate understanding, reflect on learning, and make connections to real-life situations. Questions could be related to the text's relevance, the author's bias, or the characters' motivations.

Formation and Promotion of Questioning as a Reading Strategy.

The questioning reading strategy was first introduced in the 1960s by the educational psychologist, Benjamin Bloom, who developed the Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Bloom's Taxonomy is a framework for classifying learning objectives into six hierarchical levels, ranging from simple recall of information to complex analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The questioning strategy is based on the higher-order thinking levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, which require students to engage in critical thinking and problem-solving.

Since its inception, the questioning strategy has been widely promoted by educators, researchers, and curriculum developers as a powerful tool for improving reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. It has been incorporated into various reading programs and curricula, including the Reading Recovery Program, the Common Core State Standards, and the Response to Intervention (RTI) framework.

How Questioning Helps RTI Students

The RTI framework is a multi-tiered system of support designed to help struggling students by providing targeted interventions that address their specific needs. The questioning reading strategy is an effective tool for RTI students because it helps them to:

Activate Prior Knowledge: Questioning before reading helps students to activate their prior knowledge and build connections between what they already know and what they will be reading. This can improve their comprehension and retention of information.

Monitor Comprehension: Questioning during reading helps students to monitor their comprehension and identify areas of confusion or misunderstanding. This can help them to clarify their understanding and improve their overall comprehension.

Reflect on Learning: Questioning after reading helps students to reflect on what they have learned and make connections to real-life situations. This can help them to apply their learning and develop a deeper understanding of the text.

Implementing Questioning in the Classroom

Here are some practical tips for implementing the questioning reading strategy in the classroom:

Model the Strategy: Model the questioning strategy by asking students questions about the text before, during, and after reading. This can help them to see how the strategy works and develop their own questioning skills.

Provide Guided Practice: Provide guided practice by giving students a set of questions to answer before, during, and after reading. This can help them to develop their questioning skills and build confidence.

Encourage Independent Practice: Encourage independent practice by having students generate their own questions before, during, and after reading. This can help them to take ownership of their learning and develop their critical thinking skills.

Use Graphic Organizers: Use graphic organizers, such as KWL charts or mind maps, to help students organize their questions and make connections between ideas.

Differentiate Instruction: Differentiate instruction by providing different levels of questioning for students at different levels of proficiency. For example, lower-level questions for struggling readers and higher-level questions for advanced readers.

In conclusion, questioning is a powerful reading strategy that can help RTI students to improve their reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. By generating and answering questions before, during, and after reading, students can engage with the text, monitor their comprehension, and reflect on their learning. Implementing this strategy in the classroom requires modeling, guided practice, independent practice, graphic organizers, and differentiated instruction. By incorporating questioning into their reading instruction, teachers can help their students to become more effective readers and critical thinkers.

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Planning questions

Effective questioning sessions in classroom require advance preparation. While some instructors may be skilled in extemporaneous questioning, many find that such questions have phrasing problems, are not organized in a logical sequence, or do not require students to use the desired thinking skills.

Levels and types of questions

Questioning should be used to achieve well-defined goals. An instructor should ask questions that will require students to use the thinking skills that he or she is trying to develop. Bloom's Taxonomy is a hierarchical system for ordering thinking skills from lower to higher, where each level requires a student's mastery of the skills below it. It is not essential that an instructor be able to classify each question at a specific level. The taxonomy is introduced as a tool which is helpful for defining the kinds of thinking skills instructors expect from students and for helping to establish congruence between the instructor's goals and the questions he or she asks.

People often refer to "lower-level" and "higher-level" questions or behaviors, rather than assigning a specific level to those questions or behaviors. Lower-level questions are typically at the remember, understand, and apply levels of the taxonomy and are most appropriate for:

• evaluating students' preparation and comprehension
• diagnosing students' strengths and weaknesses
• reviewing and/or summarizing content

Higher-level questions involve the ability to analyze, evaluate, or create, and are most appropriate for:

• encouraging students to think more deeply and critically
• problem solving
• encouraging discussions
• stimulating students to seek information on their own

Typically, an instructor would vary the level of questions within a single class period. For example, an instructor might ask the higher-level question, "How can style of writing and the thesis of a given essay be related?" If she gets inadequate or incorrect student response to that question, she might ask lower-questions to check whether students know and understand the material. For example, she might then ask, "What is the definition of thesis statement ?" or "What are some characteristics of different writing styles?"

In addition to asking questions at various levels of the taxonomy, an instructor might consider whether he is asking closed or open questions. A closed question is one for which there are a limited number of acceptable answers, most of which will usually be anticipated by the instructor. For example, "What is the definition of an adjective?" An open question is one for which there are many acceptable answers, most of which will not be anticipated by the instructor. For example, "What is an example of an adjective?"

Both open and closed questions may be used at any level of the taxonomy:

Steps for planning questions

• Decide on your goal or purpose for asking questions. Your goal should help you determine what levels of questions you will ask.
• Select the content for questioning. Choose material which you consider important rather than trivial. Students will study and learn based on the questions you ask. Do not mislead them by emphasizing less important material.
• Ask questions that require an extended response or at least a "content" answer. Avoid questions that can be answered "yes" or "no" unless you are going to follow with more questions to explore reasoning.
• Until you are quite skilled at classroom questioning you should write your main questions in advance. This is called "scripting."  Arrange your list in some logical sequence (specific to general, lower level to higher level, a sequence related to content). Should you think of additional or better questions during the questioning process, you can be flexible and add those or substitute them for some of your planned questions. However, having a prepared list of questions will help to assure that you ask questions appropriate for your goals and representative of the important material.
• Phrase your questions so that the task is clear to students. Questions such as "What about foreign affairs?" do not often lead to productive answers and discussion. "What did we say about chemical bonding?" is too general unless you are only seeking a review of any material the students remember.
• Your questions should not contain the answers. Avoid implied response questions when you are genuinely seeking an answer from the class. A question such as "Don't we all agree that the author of the article exaggerated the dangers of agent orange to strengthen his viewpoint?" will not encourage student response.
• What are some typical misconceptions that might lead students to incorrect answers?
• Am I asking an open or closed question?
• What type of response do I expect from students, a definition? Example? Solution?
• Will I accept the answer in the students' language or am I expecting the textbooks' words or my own terms?
• What will my strategy be for handling incorrect answers?
• What will I do if students do not answer?

Handling student responses to questions

An important aspect of classroom interaction is the manner in which the instructor handles student responses. When an instructor asks a question, students can either respond, ask a question, or give no response.

Strategies to use when students respond

• The correctness of the answer. If a student gives an answer that is off-target or incorrect, the instructor may want to briefly acknowledge the response, then think of ways to help the student provide a correct answer. The instructor could use strategies such as probing, paraphrasing, or asking the question in a different way.

Be sure to vary reinforcement techniques between various verbal statements and nonverbal reactions. Try not to overuse reinforcement in the classroom by overly praising every student comment. Students begin to question the sincerity of reinforcement if every response is reinforced equally or in the same way.

• Analyze a student's statement, make a student aware of underlying assumptions, or justify or evaluate a statement. Instructor : What are some ways we might solve the energy crisis? Student : I would like to see a greater movement to peak-load pricing by utility companies. Instructor: What assumptions are you making about consumer behavior when you suggest that solution?
• Help students deduce relationships. Instructors may ask students to judge the implications of their statements or to compare and contrast concepts. Instructor : What are some advantages and disadvantages of having grades given in courses? Student 1 : Grades can be a motivator for people to learn. Student 2 : Too much pressure on grades causes some students to stop learning, freeze, go blank. Instructor : If both of those statements are true, what generalizations can you make about the relationship between motivation and learning?
• Have students clarify or elaborate on their comments by asking for more information. Instructor: Could you please develop your ideas further? Can you provide an example of that concept? Student: It was obvious that the crew had gone insane. Instructor : What is the legal definition of insane? Student : It was a violation of due process. Instructor: Can you explain why?
• Adjust/Refocus: When a student provides a response that appears out of context, the instructor can refocus to encourage the student to tie her response to the content being discussed. This technique is also used to shift attention to a new topic. Instructor: What does it mean to devalue the dollar? Student: Um—I'm not really sure, but doesn't it mean that, um, a dollar doesn't go as far as it used to? Does that mean it's devalued? Instructor: Well, let's talk a little bit about another concept, and that is inflation. How does inflation affect your dollar?

Strategies for responding to student questions

There are many ways in which an instructor can respond to questions from students. However, all strategies begin with this important step: Listen to the student's question . After you are certain that you understand the question, be sure that other students have heard and understood the question. Then proceed with one of the following strategies:

• Answer the question yourself. This strategy is best when you have little time remaining in class. The disadvantage of this approach is that you do not encourage student-to-student interaction or independent learning.
• Redirect the question to the class. This strategy helps to encourage student-to-student interaction and to lessen reliance on the instructor for all information.
• Attempt to help the student answer his own question. This may require prompting through reminders of pertinent previously learned information. Or this strategy may require you to ask the student a lower-level question or a related question to begin his thought process. The advantage of this strategy, as in redirecting, is that the student may learn the process of searching for answers to his own questions rather than relying on the teacher. The risk is that the process can be embarrassing or so threatening that the student will be too intimidated to ask questions in the future. Obviously some human compassion is called for when using this strategy.
• Ask the student to stop after class to discuss the question. This strategy is most appropriate when a student raises complicated, tangential questions or when a student is obviously the only one who does not understand a point and a simple answer does not clarify it for the student. Even in these situations there are risks in using this strategy. Students may be intimidated from raising questions in class. The instructor may think that only the questioning student does not understand when actually a number of students are having the same problem.
• Refer the student to a resource where she can find the answer.
• Defer the question until a more appropriate time if the question is not connected to the material you're covering. Be sure to note the question and the student, and to return to the question at a more appropriate time.

No matter which strategy you use you should return to the student after addressing the question and determine whether the response has satisfied the student.

If you don't know the answer to a student question never fake an answer . Admit that you cannot answer the question and then select one of these strategies or others you find appropriate:

• Ask whether someone in the class can answer the question. Most times after class you should follow this with an attempt to determine whether the information provided was accurate or based on sound reasoning and credible sources.
• Either propose a plan for obtaining evidence for answering the question or ask the students to suggest how the question could be investigated.
• If possible, suggest a resource where the student can find information. The resource may be written material, another faculty or staff member, a student, or someone from the community.
• Volunteer to find the answer yourself and report back to the class. Make sure you actually do return with the answer if you choose this option.

Strategies to use when students don't respond

• Redirect: When a student responds to a question, the instructor can ask another student to comment on his statement. One purpose of using this technique is to enable more students to participate. This strategy can also be used to allow a student to correct another student's incorrect statement or respond to another student's question. Instructor: Ali, do you agree with Mark's comment? Instructor: From your experience, Aisha, does what Vito said seem true? Instructor: Li, can you give me an example of the concept that Pat mentioned?
• The instructor can try to reword the question to make it clearer. The question may have been poorly phrased. I nstructor : What is neurosis?  Student: (No response)  Instructor : What are the identifying characteristics of a neurotic person?
• The instructor can provide some information to help students come up with the answer. Instructor: How far has the ball fallen after 3 seconds? Student: I have no idea. Instructor : Let's break down the question, Ann. How do we measure distance?
• The instructor can break the question down into more manageable parts. Instructor : What is the epidemiology of polio? Student : I'm not sure. Instructor : What does "epidemiology" mean?
• Using "wait time": One factor that can have powerful effects on student participation is the amount of time an instructor pauses between asking a question and doing something else (calling on a student or rewording the question). Research on classroom questioning and information processing indicates that students need at least three seconds to comprehend a question, consider the available information, formulate an answer, and begin to respond. In contrast, the same research established that, on average, a classroom teacher allows less than one second of wait-time. After teachers were trained to allow three to five seconds of wait-time the following significant changes in their classrooms occurred (from Rowe, 1974):
• The number of students who failed to respond when called on decreased.
• The number of unsolicited but appropriate responses increased.
• The length of student responses increased.
• The number of student statements where evidence was used to make inferences increased.
• The number of responses from students identified by the teacher as less able increased.
• The number of student-to-student interactions increased.
• The number of student questions increased.

Allowing wait-time after a student response or question also produced significant changes in classroom interaction. The most notable change was that the instructor made fewer teaching errors characterized by responding illogically or inappropriately to a student comment.

On the other hand, too much wait-time can also be detrimental to student interaction. When no one seems to be able to answer a question, more wait-time will not necessarily solve the problem. Experts say that waiting more than 20-30 seconds is perceived as punishing by students. The amount of wait-time needed in part depends upon the level of question the instructor asks and student characteristics such as familiarity with content and past experience with the thought process required.

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Critical Thinking Matrix

A useful way to conceptualise critical thinking is as metacogntive evaluation - thinking about our thinking and evaluating its quality. It follows then that an essential activity in the teaching of critical thinking is to help students become metacognitive aware . But how does one actually do that?

The Critical Thinking Matrix is a tool developed by Peter Ellerton at the University of Queensland that helps teachers do exactly that.


There's a lot of information in there, so have a go with this interactive version. First select which value of inquiry you'd like to focus on followed by which cognitive skill you'd like to develop. The maxtrix will prompt you with a range of activities and descriptions of them.

Try it now.

I want more ...

In my student's ... ..

Adapted from the Critical Thinking Matrix by Ellerton, P (2015) Univeristy of Queensland ( pdf ). Cognitive skills modified from Facione, P. A. (1990). Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction. Values of inquiry concept from Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. 2. Values of inquiry modified from Elder, L. and R. Paul (2001). "Critical Thinking: Thinking with Concepts." Journal of Developmental Education 24(3)

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Article • 8 min read

Critical Thinking

Developing the right mindset and skills.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

We make hundreds of decisions every day and, whether we realize it or not, we're all critical thinkers.

We use critical thinking each time we weigh up our options, prioritize our responsibilities, or think about the likely effects of our actions. It's a crucial skill that helps us to cut out misinformation and make wise decisions. The trouble is, we're not always very good at it!

In this article, we'll explore the key skills that you need to develop your critical thinking skills, and how to adopt a critical thinking mindset, so that you can make well-informed decisions.

What Is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking is the discipline of rigorously and skillfully using information, experience, observation, and reasoning to guide your decisions, actions, and beliefs. You'll need to actively question every step of your thinking process to do it well.

Collecting, analyzing and evaluating information is an important skill in life, and a highly valued asset in the workplace. People who score highly in critical thinking assessments are also rated by their managers as having good problem-solving skills, creativity, strong decision-making skills, and good overall performance. [1]

Key Critical Thinking Skills

Critical thinkers possess a set of key characteristics which help them to question information and their own thinking. Focus on the following areas to develop your critical thinking skills:

Being willing and able to explore alternative approaches and experimental ideas is crucial. Can you think through "what if" scenarios, create plausible options, and test out your theories? If not, you'll tend to write off ideas and options too soon, so you may miss the best answer to your situation.

To nurture your curiosity, stay up to date with facts and trends. You'll overlook important information if you allow yourself to become "blinkered," so always be open to new information.

But don't stop there! Look for opposing views or evidence to challenge your information, and seek clarification when things are unclear. This will help you to reassess your beliefs and make a well-informed decision later. Read our article, Opening Closed Minds , for more ways to stay receptive.

Logical Thinking

You must be skilled at reasoning and extending logic to come up with plausible options or outcomes.

It's also important to emphasize logic over emotion. Emotion can be motivating but it can also lead you to take hasty and unwise action, so control your emotions and be cautious in your judgments. Know when a conclusion is "fact" and when it is not. "Could-be-true" conclusions are based on assumptions and must be tested further. Read our article, Logical Fallacies , for help with this.

Use creative problem solving to balance cold logic. By thinking outside of the box you can identify new possible outcomes by using pieces of information that you already have.

Self-Awareness

Many of the decisions we make in life are subtly informed by our values and beliefs. These influences are called cognitive biases and it can be difficult to identify them in ourselves because they're often subconscious.

Practicing self-awareness will allow you to reflect on the beliefs you have and the choices you make. You'll then be better equipped to challenge your own thinking and make improved, unbiased decisions.

One particularly useful tool for critical thinking is the Ladder of Inference . It allows you to test and validate your thinking process, rather than jumping to poorly supported conclusions.

Developing a Critical Thinking Mindset

Combine the above skills with the right mindset so that you can make better decisions and adopt more effective courses of action. You can develop your critical thinking mindset by following this process:

Gather Information

First, collect data, opinions and facts on the issue that you need to solve. Draw on what you already know, and turn to new sources of information to help inform your understanding. Consider what gaps there are in your knowledge and seek to fill them. And look for information that challenges your assumptions and beliefs.

Be sure to verify the authority and authenticity of your sources. Not everything you read is true! Use this checklist to ensure that your information is valid:

• Are your information sources trustworthy ? (For example, well-respected authors, trusted colleagues or peers, recognized industry publications, websites, blogs, etc.)
• Is the information you have gathered up to date ?
• Has the information received any direct criticism ?
• Does the information have any errors or inaccuracies ?
• Is there any evidence to support or corroborate the information you have gathered?
• Is the information you have gathered subjective or biased in any way? (For example, is it based on opinion, rather than fact? Is any of the information you have gathered designed to promote a particular service or organization?)

If any information appears to be irrelevant or invalid, don't include it in your decision making. But don't omit information just because you disagree with it, or your final decision will be flawed and bias.

Now observe the information you have gathered, and interpret it. What are the key findings and main takeaways? What does the evidence point to? Start to build one or two possible arguments based on what you have found.

You'll need to look for the details within the mass of information, so use your powers of observation to identify any patterns or similarities. You can then analyze and extend these trends to make sensible predictions about the future.

To help you to sift through the multiple ideas and theories, it can be useful to group and order items according to their characteristics. From here, you can compare and contrast the different items. And once you've determined how similar or different things are from one another, Paired Comparison Analysis can help you to analyze them.

The final step involves challenging the information and rationalizing its arguments.

Apply the laws of reason (induction, deduction, analogy) to judge an argument and determine its merits. To do this, it's essential that you can determine the significance and validity of an argument to put it in the correct perspective. Take a look at our article, Rational Thinking , for more information about how to do this.

Once you have considered all of the arguments and options rationally, you can finally make an informed decision.

Afterward, take time to reflect on what you have learned and what you found challenging. Step back from the detail of your decision or problem, and look at the bigger picture. Record what you've learned from your observations and experience.

Critical thinking involves rigorously and skilfully using information, experience, observation, and reasoning to guide your decisions, actions and beliefs. It's a useful skill in the workplace and in life.

You'll need to be curious and creative to explore alternative possibilities, but rational to apply logic, and self-aware to identify when your beliefs could affect your decisions or actions.

You can demonstrate a high level of critical thinking by validating your information, analyzing its meaning, and finally evaluating the argument.

Critical Thinking Infographic

See Critical Thinking represented in our infographic: An Elementary Guide to Critical Thinking .

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Critical Thinking

• Analyze Fallacies

Step 1: Identify the problem(s) and uncertainties.

Step 2: obtain information., step 3: make predictions about the future., step 4: make decisions by choosing among alternatives., step 5: implement the decision, evaluate performance, and learn..

• How to Search the Library This link opens in a new window
• Evaluating Sources

What exactly is the problem…

(Study the problem to clarify what you need to know to solve it.  Distinguish problems over which you have some control from problems over which you have no control. Pay special attention to controversial issues in which it is essential to consider multiple points of view.)

The problem is this …

(Write out the problem clearly and precisely, with details. Write the problem in different ways until you get it perfectly clear in your mind.)

This is an important problem because…

(Remember in business, a problem is important if it affects the bottom line. So how does this problem affect the bottom line (net income).

The key question(s) that needs to be answered to solve this problem is…

(Every problem has questions connected to it. Here we want you to write out the most important question(s) you need to answer to solve the problem. State it clearly and precisely. Being specific is very important.)

The following information is needed to answer this question…

(Here you are looking for the facts and/or data that help you solve the problem. Actively seek the information most relevant to the question. Include in that information options for action, both short-term and long-term. Recognize limitations in the terms of resources such as money, time, and people.)

Some important assumptions I am using in my thinking are…

(Figure out what you are taking for granted. Make sure these assumptions are reasonable. Watch out for self – serving or unjustified assumptions.)

The points of view relevant to this problem belong to…

(Who are your stakeholders?  Determine whether the stakeholder’s point of view is relevant.)

Note: Remember to view the information you have obtained for potential bias. This is from the perspective of your own bias to the research and the bias of the authors who compiled the data and the research you gathered. In other words, do not discount the importance of other’s data because of your own bias(is).

If this problem gets solved, some important implications are…

(Evaluate options, taking into account the advantages and disadvantages of possible decisions before acting. What consequences are likely to follow from this or that decision?)

If this problem does not get solved, some important implications are…

The potential alternative solutions to solve the problem are…

(If the problem involves multiple conflicting points of view, you will have to assess which solution is the best.)

Note:  if the problem is one-dimensional, there may be just one correct solution.

What is the best solution and why…

(After following the process above, I think the best solution to the problem is… Defend your recommendation.)

In business, the fifth step in the decision making process is implementation. In the MBA program, most times you will end with Step 4 since you will not have the opportunity to implement. You may be asked to develop an implementation plan and recommend how you will evaluate performance in some assignments.

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{{item.title}}, my essentials, ask for help, contact edconnect, directory a to z, how to guides, teacher standards and accreditation, key questioning strategies.

Designing questions involves determining the purpose, and then selecting the most appropriate types of questions for that purpose. There are 4 key questioning strategies that can support teacher's effectiveness in the classroom.

The 4 key questioning strategies include:

• designing higher cognitive questions
• developing a sequence of questions
• increasing wait time
• responding to answers - redirecting, probing, reinforcing.

1. Designing higher cognitive questions

It is important for teachers to be able to design different questions to meet different cognitive demands.

Higher cognitive questions are:

• interpretive
• inferential
• synthesis questions.

For example, asking students to manipulate bits of information previously learned to create an answer or to support an answer with logically reasoned evidence.

Lower cognitive questions are:

• knowledge questions.

For example, asking students to recall verbatim, or in their own words, material previously read or taught by the teacher.

Some frameworks and tools

There are several frameworks and tools available to assist the process of designing higher cognitive questions including:

• Weiderhold's Question Matrix comprises 36 question starters asking what, where, when, which, who, why and how. These questions are asked in present, past and future tenses, ranging from simple recall through to predictions and imagination or single questions depending on the task.
• The Questioning Toolkit is a comprehensive range of question types based on McTigh & Wiggins’ essential questions.
• Thinker's Keys is a strategy to develop creative and critical thinking, designed by Tony Ryan. There are 20 keys, or questions, that challenge the reader to compose their own questions and responses.
• Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning, Teaching and Assessing organises questions into 6 categories according to whether they involve knowledge, comprehension, analysis, application, synthesis or evaluation.
• De Bono's Six Thinking Hats encourages students to look at a topic, problem or idea from more than one perspective, with each hat representing a different kind of thinking, encouraging new questions.

2. Developing a sequence of questions

Consideration should be given to planning a sequence of questions in a lesson or for lessons over a period of time. This is to ensure that there is a range of questions that make increasingly challenging cognitive demands on students.

Scaffolding questions allows repetition without being repetitive. Each time you lead the students to a different level of question on a topic, students have the opportunity to revisit what they know and use it in a different way. This helps students to remember and at the same time, it keeps them engaged because you are not simply repeating the same question. Even though it is the same topic, it is new.

Closed questions are useful for establishing the core material of a unit, while open questions advance students into manipulating, extending and transforming this material. That is, ask knowledge and comprehension questions about new material before asking questions requiring analysis and evaluation.

Tips and tactics

When planning your lesson:

• create a spreadsheet/ table with concepts you wish to develop listed in the first column
• add 3 additional columns: knowledge/ comprehension, application/ analysis and synthesis/ evaluation
• write several questions for each column for each concept.

These actions provide you with: questions for building a vocabulary foundation of the concepts, questions for helping students relate to the new knowledge to what they know already, and questions to help students establish the value of this knowledge. It also creates a useful question bank for assessing student knowledge.

Students in small groups, answering all the questions from easy to hard, is an effective way to engage all students.

3. Increasing wait time

Research shows that increasing the wait time after questioning improves the number and quality of the responses - 3 seconds for a lower-order question and as much as 10 seconds or more for a higher-order question.

Pausing, or wait time, before and after asking, and after a response, encourages students to extend their answers.

Researchers on questioning strategies have identified 2 kinds of wait time:

• Wait time 1 refers to the amount of time the teacher allows to elapse after they have posed a question and before a student begins to speak.
• Wait time 2 refers to the amount of time a teacher waits after a student has stopped speaking before saying anything.

Research findings include:

• The average wait time teachers allow after posing a question is a second or less.
• Students whom teachers perceive as having learning difficulties are given less wait time than those whom teachers view as being more capable.
• For lower cognitive questions, a wait time of 3 seconds is most positively related to achievement, with less success resulting from shorter or longer wait times.
• There seems to be no wait time threshold for higher cognitive questions - students seem to become more and more engaged and perform better and better the longer the teacher is willing to wait.
• improvements in the student achievement
• improvements in student retention, as measured by delayed tests
• increases in the number of higher cognitive responses generated by students
• increases in the length of student responses
• increases in the number of unsolicited responses
• decreases in students' failure to respond
• increases in the amount and quality of evidence students offer to support their inferences
• increases in contribution by students who do not participate much when wait-time is under 3 seconds
• expansion of the variety of responses offered by students
• decreases in student interruptions
• increases in student-student interactions
• increases in the number of questions posed by students.
• Give students 30 seconds to share their answer with a partner before feeding back - this also promotes confidence as it is a ‘joint effort’.
• Use teaching ideas such as think, pair, share or snowballing at key points for ‘big’ questions.
• Ask the question, move to another part of the room and repeat it before taking any answers.
• Set a timer, or ask a student to time the wait time.
• Play some thinking music.
• Point to a classroom sign that says: ‘THINK TIME’.

4. Responding to answers using redirection, probing and reinforcement

A positive response to any answer is essential, with the response falling into 2 broad categories:

• extending responses through follow on questions
• responding to incorrect/ inappropriate answers.

Professor Dylan Wiliam emphasises the need to move away from IRE (initiate, response, evaluate) and to think more carefully about the way we ask questions and respond to students' answers.

Several studies have confirmed that nearly half of student answers are at a different cognitive level than the teacher question, yet teachers generally accept these answers as sufficient without probing or prompting correct responses. (Walsh & Sattes)

• Redirection and probing (often researched together) are positively related to achievement when they are explicitly focused, for example on the clarity, accuracy and plausibility of student responses.
• Redirection and probing are unrelated to achievement when they are vague or critical, for example 'That’s not right - try again' or 'Where did you get an idea like that?'
• Acknowledging correct responses is positively related to achievement.
• Praise is positively related to achievement when it is used sparingly, is directly related to the student's response, and is sincere and credible.

When extending responses through follow on questions, or when responding to incorrect/ inappropriate answers, use Socrates' probing questions. They include:

Questions for clarification:

• Why are you saying that?
• What exactly does this mean?
• How does this relate to what we have been talking about?
• What do we already know about this?
• Can you rephrase that, please?

Questions that probe assumptions:

• What else could we assume?
• You seem to be assuming ...
• How did you choose those assumptions?
• How can you verify or disprove that assumption?
• What would happen if ...?
• Do you agree/ disagree with …?

Questions that probe reasons and evidence:

• Why is that happening?
• How do you know this?
• Can you give me an example of that?
• How might it be refuted?
• Why is ... happening?
• Why? (keep asking it – you'll never get past a few times)
• What evidence is there to support what you are saying?
• On what authority are you basing your argument?

Questions about viewpoints and perspectives:

• Who benefits from this?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of...?
• How are ... and ... similar?
• What would ... say about it?
• How could you look at this another way?

Questions that probe implications and consequences:

• What are the consequences of that assumption?
• How could ... be used to ...?
• What are the implications of ...?
• How does ... affect ...?
• How does ... fit with what we learned before?
• Why is ... important?
• What is the best ... ? Why?

Questions about the question:

• What was the point of asking that question?
• Why do you think I asked this question?
• Am I making sense? Why not?
• What else might I ask?
• What does that mean?

Questioning ideas and tactics

The following questioning ideas and tactics are from a range of sources and not in a particular order.

Select the questioning ideas and tactics that best suit your purposes. They are loosely organised into 2 categories:

Hands down questioning

• Engaging all students in questioning.
• Whiteboards - students have small whiteboards at their desks or tables and write their ideas, thinking or answers on the whiteboard and then hold it up for teacher and/or peer scanning.
• Pose, pause, pounce, bounce - the teacher poses a question, pauses to allow students time to think, pounces on any student (keeps them on their toes!) and then bounces the student’s response onto another student. For example, Teacher: How might you describe a hexagon? Student: It’s a shape with 6 sides. Teacher: (to the second student) How far do you agree with that answer?
• Hinge questions - hinge questions are based on the critical concept in a lesson that students must understand before you move on in the lesson. A hinge question should fall about midway through the lesson, with every student responding to the question within 2 minutes. You must be able to collect and interpret the responses from all students in 30 seconds.
• Ask : questions should be prepared in advance in your lesson plan.
• Pause : let the students think about what you are asking by giving them 3-5 seconds to respond.
• Pick : pick a student by name to answer the question, do not always pick on the first student that raises their hand, and you can also pick someone that hasn't raised their hand in order to force participation.
• Listen : listen to the answer, make eye contact with the student, and provide praise and encouragement when the answer, or an aspect of the answer, is provided. Ensure you mix your effect words as nothing sounds phonier than a teacher that always says 'very good' whenever a student answers a question.
• Expound and explain : generate a dialogue based on the student's response. If the student's response was incorrect, redirect the question back to the other students with 'That's an interesting response, can anyone else provide a different answer?'

Engaging all students questioning

1. Cold call :

• Name the question before identifying students to answer it.
• Call on students regardless of whether they have their hands raised, using a variety of techniques such as random calls, tracking charts to ensure all students contribute, name sticks or name cards.
• Scaffold the questions from simple to increasingly complex, probing for deeper explanations.
• Connect thinking threads by returning to previous comments and connecting them to current ones. In this way, listening to peers is valued, and after a student’s been called on, they remain part of the continued conversation and class thinking.

2. No opt-out

Requires a student to (eventually) correctly answer the question posed to them. When a student gives an incorrect or partial answer, call on other students for an answer - take a correct answer from students with their hands raised or cold call other students until the right answer is given - and then return to the student who gave the incorrect or partial answer for a complete and correct response.

3. Think or ink pair-share :

• Students are given a short and specific timeframe (1-2 minutes) to think or ink (write) freely to briefly process their understanding/ opinion of a text selection, discussion question or topic.
• Students then share their thinking or writing with a peer for another short and specific timeframe, for example, a minute each.
• Finally, the teacher leads a whole-class sharing of thoughts, often charting the diverse thinking and patterns in student ideas. This helps both students and the teacher assess understanding and clarify student ideas.

4. Turn and talk

When prompted, students turn to a shoulder buddy or neighbour and in a set amount of time, share their ideas about a prompt or question posed by the teacher or other students. Depending on the goals of the lesson and the nature of the Turn and Talk, students may share some key ideas from their discussions with the class.

5. Hot seat

The teacher places key questions on random seats throughout the room. When prompted, students check their seats and answer the questions. Students who do not have a hot seat question are asked to agree or disagree with the response and explain their thinking.

6. Fist-to-five or thumb-o'meter

To show the degree of agreement or commonalities in ideas, students can quickly show their thinking by putting their thumbs up, to the side or thumbs down. Alternatively, they can hold up a fist, or place their hand near their opposite shoulder, for 0/ disagree or 1-5 fingers for higher levels of confidence or agreement.

7. ABCDE cards

The teacher asks/ presents a multiple-choice question, and then asks students to simultaneously (“on the count of 3”) hold up 1 or more cards, labelled A, B, C, D or E, as their individual response.

8. Voter’s choice

Give students a choice of possible answers to a question and have a vote on the correct option.

9. Scatter questions

Scatter questions over the whole class and move around the room to ensure questions are evenly distributed. Often teachers question students in their direct line of vision so using scatter questions counters this.

10. Who has answered?

Distribute slips of paper or card at the beginning of the lesson, and as students answer a question, they hand over one of their cards. Teachers can clearly see who still has all their cards and can target an appropriate question. This technique also allows teachers to engage reluctant students, who may be given fewer cards.

11. Bouncing ball

Address a question directly to a named student, and keep others involved by asking them to consider what else they could add or whether they agree. For example, “John, do you think that Macbeth really wants to kill the King at this point? Sam, do you agree? What evidence can you find? Does anyone think something different?"

12. Audience choice

Ask a student who often answers to select 2 or 3 other students to answer - thus keeping them involved.

13. What's the question?

"The answer is 42 - what could the question be?" or "The answer is Henry VIII, how many questions can you think of that this could answer?"

14. Quiz programs

Use quiz-program type/ formats on the whiteboard, for example, Who wants to be a millionaire, Family feud and so on.

15. Four corners

Students form 4 groups (vary the number as required) based on commonalities in their responses to a question posed. In their groups, students discuss their thinking and one student shares their ideas with the class. Students in other groups/ corners can move into that group/ corner if they change their thinking based on what they hear.

Clever questions, or 'thunks' such as: “If I ask if I can steal your pen and you say yes, is that stealing?” Or “Can I ever step on the same beach twice?” are fun and thoughtful starters. They can be used simply to spark thinking or dialogue, or they can be more targeted towards the topic or the subject at hand.

Finally, ensure you don't get so involved in the ideas/ tactics that you forget why they're being used. Remember to be creative with these ideas and adapt, re-organise and modify them to suit your purposes. It's vital to always remember that the quality of the question asked is more important than the idea or tactic.

• Cotton, K. (2001). Classroom Questioning. Retrieved October 26, 2014, from School improvement research series.
• Walsh, J. A., & Sattes, B. D. (2005). Quality Questioning: Research-Based Practice to Engage Every Learner. California: Sage Publications.

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Effective questioning in teaching

Adele sewell.

July 26, 2022

Master effective classroom questioning techniques with our guide, designed to engage students and stimulate critical thinking.

Sewell, A (2022, July 26). Effective questioning in teaching. Retrieved from https://www.structural-learning.com/post/questioning-in-teaching

What is teacher questioning?

One issue that teachers face when using questions is that they do not use them to assess and stretch students within a classroom. Often they fail to engage students as questions do not utilize HOTs ( higher order thinking ).

Bloom's (1956) taxonomy of cognitive skills is a useful tool to revisit when we reflect on our questioning. According to the revised version of Bloom's Taxonomy , there are six cognitive learning levels, each conceptually different. Over the years, classification taxonomies have been developed to guide teacher questioning (see Krathwohl (1964); Wilen (1986) and Morgan and Saxton (1991) as early examples). Hannel and Hannel (2005) show how teacher questions promote student engagement, whilst Dekker-Groen (2015) talked about how sequences of teacher and student questions influence classroom engagement . Whilst these ideas are useful to our practice, they should be applied with caution as each classroom situation is unique, and therefore it may not be applicable to have questions at multiple levels for some students. 

Using Schons's (1983) model of reflection , key questions for teachers are, do I ask mostly remembering questions? Do I enable students to show or apply their understanding ? , and finally, do we use questions to apply to understand, analyze and evaluate the content and create new meaning ? Being able to categorize questions both in the classroom and out of the classroom is a starting point to improving practice.  

As questioning is a skill that is an integral part of classroom life and essential to every teacher’s pedagogical repertoire, it is important that HOTs are employed in the classroom. Questions should be  one of the elements of effective formative assessment ,  but are often used to check on facts, and are not effectively employed as a  tool for the teacher to know what each learner knows and understands about subject content . Black et al.(, 2003) stated that using higher order probing and challenging questions will enable the teacher to be better informed about student progress , which will have an impact of more individualized and differentiated tasks and support  Questions that probe for deeper meaning, foster critical thinking skills and higher-order capabilities such as problem-solving , encourage the types of flexible learners and critical thinkers needed in the 21st century.

How does teacher questioning promote student learning?

Questioning helps students learn because it forces them to think critically about the material being taught. Students who are asked questions often respond with answers that are not memorized. They must process information and come up with solutions themselves.

When teachers ask questions, they're actually asking for feedback . Feedback is valuable because it allows teachers to determine whether their teaching methods are effective.

Feedback is especially important when teaching math. Math problems can sometimes be solved through trial and error. This means that students figure out the correct answer on their own. Instead of just telling them the right answer, teachers should give them multiple choice s and let them pick the one that works.

This type of questioning is called open-ended questioning. Open-ended questioning requires students to use critical thinking skills and problem-solving abilities to solve the question.

Open-ended questioning is used in many different types of lessons, including science, social studies, and language arts .

Choosing the right type of question

Creating good cognitive questions is easier than it sounds. Some classrooms have question walls that provide a reference point for quick fire thinking. If you want to create a divergent range of questions then you might want to explore the matrix feature below. This tool kit can be used to create questioning strategies 'in the moment' or in advance of the lesson.

This simple grid format can be used as an assessment for learning strategy or a straightforward responsive teaching activity. The key to eliciting a comprehensive student response is to focus on creating effective questioning strategies from the bottom right-hand corner, for example: Why did...? or How might...? This method of questioning produces answers that require a detailed student explanation . In other words, these complex questions require more student thinking than a simple yes-no answer.

In a recent blog post, Tom Sherrington entertains the idea that the depth of knowledge can be shown by the ability to explain something. This type of deep learning can only be demonstrated with sophisticated student responses that can be both nurtured and articulated through a well-designed cognitive question.

Creating effective questioning techniques

Within the Universal Thinking Framework , we have categorised Socratic questioning according to the desired learning outcome. In other words, we are encouraging educators to think about the learning experience and consider how they want their learners to think. The type of cognitive response we want to nurture will have a corresponding way of talking. This dialogic approach can be described as 'learning through talk' (as opposed to learning to talk).

The thinking framework includes a range of responses that equip teachers with talking stems to make this type of approach easier to facilitate in the classroom. We call it planning for understanding. The student responses that we cultivate enable children to put their thoughts into words . These types of methods act as a springboard toward better writing. Creating classroom cultures of deep learning will require adequate thinking time for the students as we aim to slow the process down and cause more deliberate and meaningful cognitive responses.

Purpose of teacher questioning

Questioning can serve many purposes; when used effectively, it engages students in the learning process and provides opportunities for students to ask questions themselves. Too often as teachers, we pose the questions and wait for a response but forget to pause, allowing students to think, pounce to target the question to learners based on ability and understanding, and then bounce the question to another learner to enable more than one response and perspective to be given.

Extending questioning by asking students to compose questions to ask each other on a subject area, as part of a recap or adequate wait time in a teaching session, we begin to challenge levels of thinking and start to inform both the student and teacher if students are ready to progress with their learning.  This simple recap tool uses consolidation and active learning techniques to foster metacognition . 

Questioning is a crucial pedagogical skill, but one that requires practiced application (Cavanaugh and Warwick, 2001). Paramore (2017) identifies an imbalance of questions often found in teaching, saying there is a dominance of teacher talk and an over-reliance on closed questions to check learning or verify everyday activities, providing only limited assessment for learning . Too often, questions from teachers are organizational, such as ‘What do we always put at the top of our page to begin with?’ or instructional in nature, such as ‘Who can tell me what an adjective is?’ and have low cognitive involvement and result in limited answers such as ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. 

Research on classroom questioning

Wragg (1993) found teachers commonly use types of questions that are management-related, e.g. ‘Has everyone finished this piece of work now? or information recall-related , e.g. ‘How many sides does a quadrilateral have?, rather than using higher-order questions, e.g. ‘What evidence do you have for saying that?’ It must be remembered that open or divergent questions encourage greater expansion in answers and promote better classroom dialogue and understanding (Tofade, Elsner and Haines, 2013). Often as teachers, we are wanting to move swiftly through content and deliver knowledge that we forget to support students to reflect, consolidate and make new connections in meaning (Vygotsky 1978).

Too often, students become disengaged with teacher questioning, leading to low self-esteem . how often do the same students answer questions? Do we ever stop to consider why?  Petty (2014)  states that the volunteer approach of hands up, you choose a volunteer and then comment on the answer, fosters disengagement by students and gives the teacher only an overview of how one student thinks. If we are wanting to engage, generate motivation and foster problem-solving skills with students, a more active learning approach is needed.     

Lightbody (2011) advocates that the way we question our students is supported by the ability to have pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman 1986) . This involves the teacher being aware of the structure of their subject and being able to identify areas in which students struggle and therefore identify key questions to support understanding.An effective teacher will then be able to stretch students through a hinge (what do you know about? and probe questions ( so tell me why you have come to that conclusion?)   (Horsman 2020)

Getting started with questioning strategies in teaching

By identifying and listing on planning documents or session plans, key questions that explore the what, how, if or when of a subject will support teachers to better question students. Thus supporting the teacher to think about questions they will ask students before the session rather than during the session. Scripting questions support teachers in identifying key areas of learning and ensure that all subject content is assessed. Boyd (2015)  talks about how teachers can support talk and thinking if they are willing to listen and then use questions to support student ideas, purposes, and lines of reasoning . By scripting questions prior to the session, key ideas can be explored in more detail.   

Another useful technique to use is when one question is posed, follow it up with why do you think that? Or how have you come to that conclusion? Using a double-barrelled questioning technique is a simple tool that supports flexible thinking. 

Low-level questioning aimed at recall and fundamental-level comprehension will plateau classroom learning quickly. Higher-level questions can produce deeper learning and thinking. However, with higher order questioning, the teacher must have the support mechanisms in place to allow learners to fail. Too often, teachers will use questions that give safe answers and not allow students to trial different responses. It is important, therefore to generate a classroom culture of there being no wrong answer, but rather half an answer or partial answer that can be collectively answered through multiple students' responses. Using simple techniques such as ' think pair share ', call a friend or pass the question on can help and support students' resilience and support higher order thinking .

To summarise, some effective techniques that support higher-order thinking skills are:-

• Students reflect on their learning by summarizing content to a peer
• Think pair share of ideas and questions 
• Cold calling, whereby students ask questions to others in the room 
• Student-generated quiz questions to peers
• Phone a friend to pass a question to a peer 

Further Reading on Questioning

Here are five studies looking at the efficacy of questioning in the classroom and how it can improve student engagement and outcomes:

• Bundick et al. (2014) : This study highlights the importance of student-teacher relationships , content relevance, and pedagogical competence in engaging students. It proposes a model for understanding and promoting student engagement through effective questioning and classroom interactions.
• Wilen & Clegg (1986) : This review identifies eleven questioning practices positively correlated with student achievement, emphasizing the impact of effective questioning on learning outcomes. It highlights the role of direct and assertive questioning in stimulating deeper and complex thinking .
• Crooks (1988) : The review suggests that classroom evaluation practices, including types of questions and feedback on incorrect answers, have significant impacts on students' learning strategies, motivation, and achievement. It underscores the importance of thoughtful questioning and follow-up questions for effective learning.
• Tschannen-Moran & Hoy (2001) : Exploring teacher efficacy, this study connects teachers' belief in their questioning skills to student outcomes such as motivation and achievement. It emphasizes the need for confident teachers who can engage students through assertive and effective questioning.
• Oga-Baldwin (2019) : Focusing on foreign language learning, this review discusses how engagement through various types of questions, including open-ended and choice of answers, can enhance the learning process and improve mastery and visual learning outcomes.

These studies collectively demonstrate the significant role of questioning in the classroom, emphasizing how different types of questions can facilitate learning processes, deepen student understanding , and ultimately improve academic outcomes.

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Classroom Practice

Question Matrix

Question Matrix (FatCamera, iStockphoto)

How does this align with my curriculum?

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A Question Matrix is a tool to assist students in developing the skill of asking rich, higher-order questions about objects, events, ideas, and places in their environment.

Why use it?

• To help students develop and ask higher-order questions
• To develop students’ understanding of ways in which questions help them to define an inquiry or a technological problem or challenge.

Tips for success

• Notice and name when students ask rich, higher order questions.
• Create a learning environment where questions are welcomed and encouraged.
• As needed, and in small groups, use the  Collaborative Learning  learning strategy or the  Group Talk  learning strategy to ensure that every student has the opportunity to ask questions.
• When students work with partners, use the  Think- Pair- Share  learning strategy to ensure each partner has the opportunity to ask his/her questions.

How do I use it?

• Introduce the Question Matrix and use it to introduce and/or review question starters such as who, what, when, where, why and how, or I wonder.
• Model how to use this tool with the whole class using an object that is likely to be unfamiliar to students.

• Record students’ questions about the object on self-adhesive notes.
• Place the post-it notes in the appropriate place on the Matrix and note the starter words that were most commonly used and where the questions fall on the Matrix. Explain to students that the goal is to have most questions from the lower right than from the upper left of the Matrix.
• Provide multiple and varied opportunities for students to asking questions and to build upon the questions of others.
• Discuss with students how the questions help to define an inquiry and to state/clarify technological problem or challenge to be solved.
• Students can record their questions with a recording device.
• Students can make sketches to represent their questions.
• Use a “feely box” to introduce this strategy and have students ask questions based on information gathered through their senses.

Related Skills Communicating Observing Questioning

Using this Strategy

Create your own.

Question Matrix Reproducible [ PDF ]

Wiederhold, C. W., & Kagan, S. (2007).  Cooperative learning & higher-level thinking: The q-matrix . Hawker Brownlow Education.

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Project zero's thinking routine toolbox.

Welcome to Project Zero’s Thinking Routines Toolbox. This toolbox highlights thinking routines developed across a number of research projects at PZ. A thinking routine is a set of questions or a brief sequence of steps used to scaffold and support student thinking. PZ researchers designed thinking routines to deepen students’ thinking and to help make that thinking “visible.” Thinking routines help to reveal students’ thinking to the teacher and also help students themselves to notice and name particular “thinking moves,” making those moves more available and useful to them in other contexts. If you're new to thinking routines and PZ's research, please click here to explore more about thinking routines . For Tips for Using Thinking Routines Effectively, click here . For an overview of the Thinking Categories, click here . For an alphabetical list of thinking routines, click here .

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Background on PZ’s Visible Thinking

Project Zero’s broader work on Visible Thinking can be defined as a flexible and systematic research-based approach to integrating the development of students' thinking with content learning across subject matters. An extensive and adaptable collection of practices, the Visible Thinking research has a double goal: on the one hand, to cultivate students' thinking skills and dispositions, and, on the other, to deepen content learning. The PZ researchers working on the first Visible Thinking initiative, including Dave Perkins, Shari Tishman, and Ron Ritchhart, developed a number of important products, but the one that is best known over two decades later is the set of practices called Thinking Routines, which help make thinking visible. Thinking Routines loosely guide learners' thought processes. They are short, easy-to-learn mini-strategies that extend and deepen students' thinking and become part of the fabric of everyday classroom life.

Thinking routines exist in all classrooms. They are the patterns by which teachers and students operate and go about the job of learning and working together in a classroom environment. A routine can be thought of as any procedure, process, or pattern of actionthat is used repeatedly to manage and facilitate the accomplishment of specific goals or tasks. Classrooms have routines that serve to manage student behavior and interactions, to organize the work of learning, and to establish rules for communication and discourse. Classrooms also have routines that structure the way students go about the process of learning. These learning routines can be simple structures, such as reading from a text and answering the questions at the end of the chapter, or they may be designed to promote students' thinking, such as asking students what they know, what they want to know, and what they have learned as part of a unit of study.

PZ’s Visible Thinking research, both the initial project and the many projects that followed, makes extensive use of learning routines that are rich in thinking. These routines are simple structures, for example a set of questions or a short sequence of steps, that can be used across various grade levels and content areas. What makes them routines, versus mere strategies, is that they get used over and over again in the classroom so that they become part of the fabric of classroom' culture. The routines were designed by PZ researchers to become one of the regular ways students go aboutthe process of learning. Routines are patterns of action that can be integrated and used in a variety of contexts. Educators might even use more than one routine in teaching a single lesson. Routines don’t take time away from anything else educators are doing; instead, they enhance learning in the classroom.

The thinking routines included in this toolbox are organized in four ways –

• by a small set of “ Core Routines ” that target different types of thinking, are easy to get started with, and are commonly used by teachers in many disciplines and with learners of many ages,
• by the way educators use routines during a unit of study, similar to the arrangement used by Ritchhart, Church and Morrison (2011) ( Introducing and Exploring Ideas , Digging Deeper into Ideas , Synthesizing Ideas ),
• by the subject-area or topic the routines were developed to explore ( Objects & Systems , Art & Objects ), and,
• by the way educators use routines for conceptual exploration ( Possibilities and Analogies , Perspective Taking , & Perspectives, Controversies and Dilemmas ).

The Toolbox organizes the Thinking Routines into categories that describe the types of thinking the routines help to facilitate. Some routines appear in more than one category, and some routines have different versions that offer modifications for specific age groups or more specific conceptual challenges. When clicking on a routine in the Toolbox, a separate page opens with links to the downloadable PDF of the routine. All routines use a common PZ template describing the purpose of the routine, offering potential applications for the routine, and often providing suggestions for its use and tips for getting started. The PZ research project responsible for developing the routine is noted at the bottom of each page along with the copyright and licensing information and guidance about how to reference the routine. We invite and encourage educators to share their experiences using the routines! Each routine has a #hashtag listed just above the reference information. Jump in and get started!

Tips for Using Thinking Routines Effectively

• Thinking routines are designed to support particular kinds of thinking, so it’s important to choose the right tool for the specific type of thinking skill to be developed or nurtured.
• Thinking routines are also designed to be used routinely. In the same way that physical exercises need to be repeated in order to develop certain muscles, thinking routines, used repeatedly, help students to develop certain kinds of thinking. Rather than using a different thinking routine with every artifact, consider using the same thinking routine (such as See, Think, Wonder) with multiple artifacts.
• As you use the thinking routines, consider how you (or the students) will document students’ ideas and questions. Try to return to these ideas and questions at the end of the learning experience and in subsequent class sessions, so that you and the students can see how their thinking and understanding are developing.

Overview of Types of Thinking Categories

Core Thinking Routines Simple routines that are applicable across disciplines, topics, and age groups, and can be used at multiple points throughout a learning experience or unit of study. (A good place to start if you or your students are new to thinking routines.)

Introducing and Exploring Ideas Routines that help students articulate their thinking at the beginning of a learning experience and spark student curiosity and wonder, motivating further exploration.

Digging Deeper Into Ideas Routines that support students in building a deeper understanding of topics or experiences by asking them to analyze, evaluate, find complexity, and make connections.

Synthesizing and Organizing Ideas Routines that help students find coherence, draw conclusions, and distill the essence of topics or experiences.

Investigating Objects and Systems Routines that encourage students to examine everyday objects and systems, appreciate their design features, and explore their complexity.

Perspective-taking Routines that cultivate students’ capacity to look beyond their own perspective and to consider others’ experiences, thoughts, and feelings.

Considering Controversies, Dilemmas, and Perspectives Routines that promote students’ inclination to seek out and explore differences and tensions among multiple facets of complex issues.

Generating Possibilities and Analogies Routines that help students learn to formulate questions, consider alternatives, and make comparisons.

Exploring Art, Images, and Objects Routines that help develop students’ cultivate key skills of observation, interpretation, and questioning through engagement with art and objects.

Types of Thinking Categories

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Core Thinking Routines

Simple routines that are applicable across disciplines, topics, and age groups, and can be used at multiple points throughout a learning experience or unit of study. (A good place to start if you or your students are new to thinking routines.)

Digging Deeper Into Ideas

Routines that support students in building a deeper understanding of topics or experiences by asking them to analyze, evaluate, find complexity, and make connections.

Introducing & Exploring Ideas

Routines that help students articulate their thinking at the beginning of a learning experience and spark student curiosity and wonder, motivating further exploration.

Investigating Objects & Systems

Routines that encourage students to examine everyday objects and systems, appreciate their design features, and explore their complexity.

Perspective-taking

Routines that cultivate students’ capacity to look beyond their own perspective and to consider others’ experiences, thoughts, and feelings.

Considering Controversies, Dilemmas, and Perspectives

Routines that promote students’ inclination to seek out and explore differences and tensions among multiple facets of complex issues.

Generating Possibilities and Analogies

Routines that help students learn to formulate questions, consider alternatives, and make comparisons.

Synthesizing & Organizing Ideas

Routines that help students find coherence, draw conclusions, and distill the essence of topics or experiences.

Exploring Art, Images, and Objects

Routines that help develop students’ cultivate key skills of observation, interpretation, and questioning through engagement with art and objects.

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