Supporting Teachers to Use Higher Level Questions

Iowa Department of Education

Supporting Teachers to Use Higher Level Questions

• “Teacher questioning strongly supports and advances students’ learning from reading.”

– Put Reading First, National Institute for Literacy

Creating a Culture for Quality Questions

Quality Questioning: Research-based Practices to Engage Every Learner

by Walsh & Sattes

Classroom Norm

Responding to higher order, think and search

questions requires a low-risk environment.•

• .

Classroom Norm

• Responding to higher order questions requires extended think and wait time.

Classroom Norm

Students should receive direct instruction on how to formulate higher order questions.

Classroom Norm

Students should be taught and expected to ask each other higher order questions.

Classroom Norm

Designing higher order questions requires planning time.

Classroom Norms

All students should be engaged in asking and responding to questions.

Our Classroom Norms

• Do we have classroom norms that support the kinds of thinking we want?

• Have we taught and regularly reviewed these norms?

• Are our norms posted?

So if we have the norms…Why Focus on High

Level Questions?

• “…if students get a steady diet of factual detail questions, they tend…to focus their (reading) on factual details.”

» Pearson and Duke

Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension (2002)

Why Focus on High Level Questions?

• “If recall of details are what teachers desire, then there is a clear pathway to shaping this behavior.”

– Pearson and Duke

Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension (2002)

Why Focus on High Level Questions?

• “When students experience a steady diet of questions requiring them to connect information in the text to their knowledge base, they will tend to focus on this more integrative behavior in the future.”

» Pearson and DukeEffective Practices

for Developing Reading

Comprehension (2002)

Why Focus on High Level Questions?

• “If…more inferential understanding is desired, then teachers will be wise to emphasize questions that provide that focus.”

» Pearson and Duke

Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension (2002)

What do We Know about the Questions Teachers Ask?

• Nearly 90% of teacher questions are low-level (even teachers that reported they wanted to engage students in higher level discourse)

» Elliott, 1989.

Supporting Teachers to Use Higher Level Questions

• Learning the QAR question types

• Analyzing ITBS/ITED questions

• Modeling• Establishing the culture

of quality questioning• Encouraging students

to engage in posing higher level questions, guiding, and using scaffolding with lots of individual practice.