Chapter 2 of Karin Hess’s book Rigor by Design, Not Chance: Deeper Thinking Through Actionable Instruction and Assessment, provides the reasons for and tools to ask students a series of probing questions. Hess reminds readers that “the art of questioning is at the heart of good teaching and deeper learning” (p. 32). She qualifies that not all questions are created equal and stresses the importance of probing questions, or open-ended questions that connect student thinking to essential learning.
Teachers need to teacher their students how to engage in questioning as well as be scaffolded to develop their own questions and Hess provides these teacher tips for effective questioning in their classrooms:
- Practice using wait (and think) time
- Brainstorm without judgment
- Ask all students to respond at the same time
- Model curiosity in order to make your own thinking visible
There are teachers who get frustrated when their students query, “why are we learning this?” They interpret the question as a challenge to their classroom authority and a disruption technique of students who are often off-task. However, this chapter reminds us that questioning can be a powerful tool for students. Rather than thinking of questions as argumentative, teachers should embrace questioning (and be ready to help connect learning to students’ lives).
Two resources that could be valuable for teachers who may want support for crafting engaging questions or encouraging students to craft their own questions are the book Good Questions: Great Ways to Differentiate Mathematics Instruction in the Standards-Based Classroom by Marian Small and the website
www.wonderopolis.org. Marian Small is a math education guru and encourages teachers to provide multiple entry points into a mathematics lesson with the use of open questions as well as parallel tasks. For example
- 72 is ___% of ____. Make this true as many ways as you can.
- 350 and 550. How are these numbers alike and different?
- An expression involving the variable k has the value of 10 when k=4. What could the expression be?
On the flip-side, Wonderopolis is a community of questions that could spark student curiosity toward their own investigations, or simply as a place to build background knowledge in a way that is engaging. The site has many parts including collections of wonders, an opportunity to record what you are wondering today, and a way to see wonders that are categorized by subject. For example, in the
category of math, students may explore, “
what is a multiple?” Unlike a classroom that is still building a culture of curiosity, this site makes curiosity the norm. Students engaging with Wonderopolis may gain comfort knowing that questions are common-place, not sources of frustration.
Hess, K. (2023).
Rigor by design, not chance: Deeper thinking through actionable instruction and assessment. ASCD.
Small, Marian.
Good questions: Great ways to differentiate mathematics instruction in the standards-based classroom. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2020.
I really like the teacher resource you shared in here. How do you think it can help teachers move to more rigorous instruction?
ReplyDeleteKathryn,
ReplyDeleteI thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog post. I wholeheartedly agree with your perspective on the importance of teachers embracing questioning and creating a connection to students' lives, rather than viewing it solely as an argumentative strategy. Your inclusion of sample math-related questions particularly caught my attention. Typically, math is seen as a subject with only one right answer, which often contributes to the preference for it over subjects like English. However, the questions you provided are framed in such a way that they offer students more than one option to investigate when solving, which fosters creativity and diverse thinking. Encouraging students to share their thought processes is a fantastic way to implement this concept. The concept of incorporating open-ended questioning in math is intriguing, and I'm excited about trying it out in my own classroom!
Katie
Kathryn,
ReplyDeleteYour post was great in terms of how you discussed how questioning is a great tool for students when it is used in a productive way. Specifically, I was impressed by your comment about how students ask, "Why are we learning this?". Teachers are often taken aback by this comment because teachers view this as students questioning your authority. But, I do agree with you that it is important to use this as a teaching moment in order to welcome the art of questioning, no matter what the question may be. In addition, I thought about how teachers should have an answer to this question as well... Teachers should be able to explain why they are teaching what they're teaching and how it relates to the state standards. The question of "why we are learning this?" is something that teachers should address, not overlook.