How to use Blooms, DOk & ORID questioning with students in the classroom.

1. Effective questioning to
develop student learning &
engagement
“Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start
again?”
― A.A. Milne
Thomas Meagher, PhD
STEM Coordinator

2. Use of Questioning in Instruction
 Strengthening memory and recall
 Helping students see relationships
 Guiding students towards deeper
understanding
 Redirecting from misconception
 Emphasizing conceptual change
 Directing students to develop personal
inquiry based questions
 Others examples not listed here?

3. Questioning in teaching for Access
and Equity for all students
 Recognizing all students within a group and
addressing each during the course of a lesson
 Keeping discussion always focused on learning
and encouraging the integration of multiple
subject areas
 Allow student direction with learning and
questioning.
 Recognizing the status of students within groups
and addressing issues of inequity
◦ Eye contact
◦ Question direction
◦ Seeking input from all learners
◦ Using your voice effectively

4. What science education
research says about Effective
Questioning
 Oral questions posed during classroom recitations
are more effective in fostering discussion than are
written questions (Cazden, 2001).
 Questions which focus student attention on salient
elements in the lesson result in better
comprehension than questions which do not (Roth,
1996).
 Increasing the use of higher cognitive questions
produces superior learning gains for students above
the primary grades and particularly for secondary
students (Ellis, 1993).
 Simply asking higher cognitive questions does not
necessarily lead students to produce higher cognitive
responses (Alexander, Jetton, Kulikowich, &
Woehler, 1994).

5. Summary of Effective
Questioning & Guiding Student
Learning
 Types of questions
◦ Closed, open-ended, probing, challenging
 Levels of complexity based on Bloom’s
Taxonomy
◦ Knowledge
◦ Understanding
◦ Applying
◦ Analyzing
◦ Evaluating
◦ Creating
 Importance of critical thinking
 Depth of Knowledge clarification
 Sequential questioning to build confidence
and understanding

7. Webb’s Depth of Knowledge
Wheel

8. How to organize learning through
ORID questioning
 A system of questioning that builds upon
each level.
 Guiding students from concrete
observations to higher level cognitive
decision making.
 Questions encourage students to find
personal meaning for what they’re
learning.
 ORID facilitates student learning to
relationships among content areas.

9. Acronym for ORID questions
 Objective (Observational)
◦ Questions that focus attention on what can be
observed or noticed, utilizing multiple senses.
 Reflective
◦ Questions that encourage students to find personal
meaning or affective perspectives.
 Interpretive
◦ Questions that guide students to find meaning,
patterns or relationships among topics (e.g. STEM)
 Decisional
◦ Questions that help students to find value and
applicability to what they are learning. Helps
students find their own answers to “Why do I have to

11. Questioning practice
 Multiple learning stations with a focus on
students working in teams or groups.
 As a teacher at each station what
questions would you ask to guide student
learning?
 Record 3 questions on question strips.
 Move to the next station and record 3 more
questions, unique from those previously
recorded from another group.
 Continue moving from station to station
until each team has visited each station.
 We’ll collect all the question strips when

12. Practice analysis
 Categorize the questions into groups as you see
relationships among the questions.
◦ Write and description for each of the categories of
questions the team created and share out with the rest of
the class.
 Read the descriptions of how questions are
categorized based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, Webb’s
Depth of Knowledge or ORID.
 Reorganize your questions based on this new
information your team received.
◦ What changes do you notice? (O)
◦ How were questions rearranged? (O)
◦ How could the wording of any of the questions be edited
to make the them more effective? (R)
◦ How could these questions be used to develop further
lessons with inquiry? (I)
◦ How could this activity be used with students to develop
inquiry investigations? (D)

13. Questions?