Promoting Rigor Through Higher Level Questioning


Book Description

Promoting Rigor Through Higher Level Questioning equips teachers with effective questioning strategies and:







Critical Thinking and Formative Assessments


Book Description

Develop your students' critical thinking skills and prepare them to perform competitively in the classroom, on state tests, and beyond. In this book, Moore and Stanley show you how to effectively instruct your students to think on higher levels, and how to assess their progress. As states implement the Common Core State Standards, teachers have been called upon to provide higher levels of rigor in their classrooms. Moore and Stanley demonstrate critical thinking as a key approach to accomplishing this goal. They explore the benefits of critical thinking and provide the tools you need to develop and monitor critical thinking skills in the classroom. Topics include: The Difference Between Higher-Level and Lower-Level Thinking Writing Higher-Level Thinking Questions Assessing Critical Thinking Strategies to Develop Higher-Level Thinking Skills




The Art of Inquiry


Book Description

Asking questions is one of the most essential functions of teaching. In this book, the authors Nancy Lee Cecil and Jeanne Pfeifer show teachers how to develop both their own questioning skills and those of their students. The authors explain how to model provocative, open-ended questions, and provides many useful teacher- and student-directed questioning strategies. From these strategies, children learn how to ask questions that enable them to construct their own meaning from what they read and experience. This revised edition includes several new questioning strategies. In addition, many of the strategies found in the original edition have been updated and/or expanded to reflect today's best practices in educaiton. The Art of Inquiry is divided into two sections. Part I identifies the many types of questions and the thinking skills they promote (such as knowledge, comprehesion, analysis, and evaluation), and discusses how to foster the free flow of questions and anwers. Part II provides practical questioning strategies and activities (for example, Polar Opposite, Think Aloud, and Self-Instruction) that stimulate the highest critical and creative thinking skills. The authors also show how asking the right questions can help children to understand content, learn to ask effective questions of themselves, and make clear connections between diverse thoughts.




High Level Thinking and Questioning Strategies. Research Brief


Book Description

Higher-order thinking is an instructional strategy supported by research. Often referred to as critical thinking skills, it is more than simple recall of facts or information. It is a function of the interaction between cognitive strategies, meta-cognition, and nonstrategic knowledge when solving problems. Higher-order thinking is based on the concepts in the cognitive domain of Bloom's Taxonomy. It suggests that some types of learning require more cognitive processing than others. Bloom's Taxonomy suggests that skills involving analysis, evaluation and synthesis are of a higher order, requiring different instructional practices. It also suggests that higher-order thinking involves "the learning of complex judgmental skills such as critical thinking and problem solving." Higher-order thinking is thought to be more useful because such skills (analysis, synthesis) are considered more likely to be useable in situations other than those in which the skill was initially learned. Questioning is one of the "essential nine" instructional practices identified by Marzano, Pickering & Pollock, 2001). It is closely linked to higher-level thinking and Bloom's Taxonomy. While teachers' use of questions is predominantly low-level, professional development can help teachers develop the skill to design and use questions that engage students in higher-level instructional processes. (Contains 14 resources.).




Make Just One Change


Book Description

The authors of Make Just One Change argue that formulating one’s own questions is “the single most essential skill for learning”—and one that should be taught to all students. They also argue that it should be taught in the simplest way possible. Drawing on twenty years of experience, the authors present the Question Formulation Technique, a concise and powerful protocol that enables learners to produce their own questions, improve their questions, and strategize how to use them. Make Just One Change features the voices and experiences of teachers in classrooms across the country to illustrate the use of the Question Formulation Technique across grade levels and subject areas and with different kinds of learners.




Questioning Strategies for Teaching the Gifted


Book Description

In order to stimulate creative development among gifted students, the use of questioning techniques has proven to be a successful strategy for encouraging purposeful inquiry. Students need to learn to generate alternatives to solving real-world problems, and teachers can help them do this by regularly incorporating divergent questions in the classroom. Teachers can incorporate questions effectively by knowing the various purposes, types, and intended outcomes and by establishing a classroom climate that promotes active engagement, exploration, and inquiry to further student achievement. Learn to generate classroom or small group discussions that challenge students to think critically and creatively. Elizabeth Shaunessy offers classroom-tested strategies for developing questions and activities that challenge students to think in new ways. Create a mutually respectful classroom climate and design appropriate questions to elicit higher level thinking from your students. This is one of the books in Prufrock Press' popular Practical Strategies Series in Gifted Education. This series offers a unique collection of tightly focused books that provide a concise, practical introduction to important topics concerning the education of gifted children. The guides offer a perfect beginner's introduction to key information about gifted and talented education. Educational Resource




The Knowledge Gap


Book Description

The untold story of the root cause of America's education crisis--and the seemingly endless cycle of multigenerational poverty. It was only after years within the education reform movement that Natalie Wexler stumbled across a hidden explanation for our country's frustrating lack of progress when it comes to providing every child with a quality education. The problem wasn't one of the usual scapegoats: lazy teachers, shoddy facilities, lack of accountability. It was something no one was talking about: the elementary school curriculum's intense focus on decontextualized reading comprehension "skills" at the expense of actual knowledge. In the tradition of Dale Russakoff's The Prize and Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, Wexler brings together history, research, and compelling characters to pull back the curtain on this fundamental flaw in our education system--one that fellow reformers, journalists, and policymakers have long overlooked, and of which the general public, including many parents, remains unaware. But The Knowledge Gap isn't just a story of what schools have gotten so wrong--it also follows innovative educators who are in the process of shedding their deeply ingrained habits, and describes the rewards that have come along: students who are not only excited to learn but are also acquiring the knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to succeed. If we truly want to fix our education system and unlock the potential of our neediest children, we have no choice but to pay attention.







Beyond the Surface


Book Description

ABSTRACT: This qualitative teacher-action research study examined the observed and reported experiences of teacher and students when the Question-Answer Relationship strategy was used as a bridge to student-generated questions in order to increase critical thinking skills in a tenth grade honors American Literature classroom. The study was completed in an urban high school in eastern Pennsylvania with 22 participants. Methods of data collection included student-generated questions, various types of student journals, student surveys, interviews, and classroom observations. Methods of analysis included analytic and reflective memos, narratives, coding, binning, continual review of student work, and construction of theme statements. During the course of the study, upon completion of reading a given set of chapters in an American classic novel, students posted questions on a WIKI. These questions were then analyzed according to levels of critical thinking being indicated. Additionally, students occasionally wrote journals to reflect on topics pertaining to the novel. These, too, were evaluated for evidence of critical thinking. When reading a difficult text, students were able to pose high-level critical thinking questions of their own. Metacognition aids students' critical thinking and enables students to transfer newly acquired skills to new learning opportunities. The lack of background knowledge and the misreading of difficult texts may hinder the development of higher-level critical thinking skills.