Developing Higher Level Thinking with Effective Questions

Teachers: One of our new specialists, Jana Byrd, shared a resource with us during her interview process that gives a multitude of questioning prompts for higher level thinking. It was originally written for mathematics, but can easily be adapted to science. These would be a great resource to have posted in your classroom to use during the Explore & Explain phase of your lessons. Enjoy!
Carrie




Developing Higher Level Thinking with Effective Questions

To help students build confidence and rely on their own understanding, ask…
• Why is that true?
• How did you reach that conclusion?
• Does that make sense?
• Can you make a model to show that?

To help students learn to reason, ask…
• Is that true for all cases? Explain.
• Can you think of a counterexample?
• How would you prove that?
• What assumptions are you making?

To check student progress, ask…
• Can you explain what you have done so far? What else is there to do?
• Whey did you decide to use this method?
• Can you think of another method that might have worked?
• Is there a more efficient strategy?
• What do you notice when…?
• Why did you decide to organize your results like that?
• Do you think this would work with other problems?
• Have you thought of all the possibilities? How can you be sure?

To help students collectively make sense of data, ask…
• What do you think about what _____ said?
• Do you agree? Why or why not?
• Does anyone have the same answer but a different way to explain it?
• Do you understand what _____ is saying?
• Can you convince the rest of us that your answer makes sense?

To encourage conjecturing, ask…
• What would happen if…? What if not?
• Do you see a pattern? Can you explain the pattern?
• What are some possibilities here?
• Can you predict the next one? What about the last one?
• What decision do you think he/she should make?

To promote problem solving, ask…
• What do you need to find out?
• What information do you have?
• What strategies are you going to use?
• Will you do it mentally? With pencil and paper? Using a number line?
• Will a calculator help?
• What tools will you need?
• What do you think the answer or result will be?


To promote problem solving, ask…
• What do you need to find out?
• What information do you have?
• What strategies are you going to use?
• Will you do it mentally? With pencil and paper? Using a number line?
• Will a calculator help?
• What tools will you need?
• What do you think the answer or result will be?

To help when students get stuck, ask…
• How would you describe the problem in your own words?
• What do you know that is not stated in the problem?
• What facts do you have?
• How did you tackle similar problems?
• Could you try it with simpler numbers? Fewer numbers? Using a number line?
• What about putting things in order?
• Would it help to create a diagram? Make a table? Draw a picture?
• Can you guess and check?
• Have you compared your work with anyone else? What did other members of your group try?

To make connections among ideas and applications, ask…
• How does this relate to…?
• What ideas that we have learned before were useful in solving this problem?
• What uses of mathematics did you find in the newspaper last night?
• Can you give me an example of…?

To encourage reflection, ask…
• How did you get your answer?
• Does you answer seem reasonable? Why or why not?
• Can you describe your method to us all? Can you explaining why it works?
• What if you had started with… rather than…?
• What if you could only use…?
• What have you learned or found out today?
• Did you use or learn any new words today? What did they mean? How do you spell them?
• What are the key points or big ideas in this lesson?

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