The document outlines a workshop focused on the importance of questioning in the classroom, emphasizing the need for teachers to utilize both surface and deep questions to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes. It highlights strategies for effective questioning, including the use of wait times and the balance between lower and higher cognitive questions. The workshop aims to provide teachers with practical tools and practices to improve their questioning techniques and support student understanding.

1. Surface vs Deep
Questioning
PreparED
April 23rd 2015

2. Intentions of today’s session
• To have you explore the why and what of
questioning with an aim to deepen your
understanding and application
• To use the skills and thinking you want to
develop in students as a spark for questioning
• To begin to identify possible questioning
strategies, practices and habits that teachers can
use to develop student skills and thinking

3. What YOUR job is today
Be open, honest and participate
As the range of
viewpoints and ideas
are presented
Try them on,
Think about them,
Discuss them &
Learn what you Learn!

4. Today’s workshop
Questioning – why is it important?
Identifying the Intended Goals
Strategies and Resources Exploration

5. Turn and Talk and then Sharing
1. Why is questioning
important in your
classrooms?
2. What is the purpose of
questioning?
3. What are some of the
outcomes you are trying
to achieve through
questioning?

6. The Real Power of Questions – Ron Richhardt
Each person will read the Ron Richhardt article with the
following in mind (take notes on the template provided)
Connections: What connections do you draw between the
article and your own practice?
Concepts: What key concepts or ideas do you think are
important or worth holding on to from the article
Changes: What changes in attitudes, thinking, or action are
suggested by the article?

7. The Real Power of Questions – Ron Richhardt
After around 10 minutes you
will have an opportunity to
share
Use the notes you took on the
3C’s to share what came up for
you from reading the article

8. Why Ask Questions?
1. To model intellectual engagement
with ideas
2. To promote and nurture ongoing
inquiry
3. To support students in constructing
understanding
4. To help students clarify their own
thinking to themselves and others

9. What is a question?
“A question is any sentence which has an interrogative form
or function. In classroom settings, teacher questions are
defined as instructional cues or stimuli that convey to
students the content elements to be learned and directions
for what they are to do and how they are to do it”
Kathleen Cotton – Classroom Questioning

10. Inquiry
So what is the difference between surface
questions and deep questions?
We need to give kids
snorkels not water-skis
Ben Johnson

11. Different Levels of Questioning

12. The point is ….
The teacher – and students – can ask questions that
elicit thinking at different depths
Questioning can be
used to spur depth
of thinking
It also can be used to
uncover the current
depth of thinking

13. In your classroom…..
• How many questions do you think you ask in a 30-
minute period?
• How many questions would be desirable?
• How many questions do your students ask?
• How many student questions would be ideal?
How many questions do we ask? Think
Pair
Share

14. Scary evidence….
On the average, during classroom interactions
approximately 60 percent of the questions asked are
lower cognitive questions, 20 percent are higher
cognitive questions, and 20 percent are procedural
Therefore, only 20 percent of the questions we ask
students involve intellectual engagement with learning,
inquiry, or developing understanding
What research shows

15. General Findings (Cotton)
1. Instruction which includes posing questions during
lessons is more effective in producing achievement gains
than instruction carried out without questioning students.
2. Oral questions posed during classroom sessions are
more effective in fostering learning than are written
questions.
3. Asking questions frequently during class discussions is
positively related to learning facts.
4. Increasing the frequency of classroom questions does
not enhance the learning of more complex material.

16. Importance of Higher Order Questions (Cotton)
1. Lower cognitive questions are more effective when the
teacher’s purpose is to impart factual knowledge and assist
students in committing this knowledge to memory
2. In most classes, a combination of higher and lower cognitive
questions is superior to exclusive use of one or the other
3. Simply asking higher cognitive questions does not necessarily lead
students to produce higher cognitive responses.
4. Increasing the use of higher cognitive questions (to considerably
above the 20 percent incidence noted in most classes) produces
superior learning gains for students
5. Teaching students to draw inferences and giving them
practice in doing so result in higher cognitive responses and
greater learning gains.

17. Bottom line …
To accomplish the goals of questioning
• We need to be clear about and articulate the learning
goals we are trying to achieve with students
• We need to plan the lower order and higher order
questions we intend to ask in a class
• We need to be aware of the frequency we ask
questions (and the students ask each other)
• We need to provide a framework for the questions
students ask

18. Example – Austin’s Butterfly

19. Today’s workshop
Questioning – why is it important?
Identifying the Intended Goals
Strategies and Resources Exploration

20. Activity Part I
With a partner, for an
upcoming lesson, identify up
to 4 learning goals (linked to
the Four Ron Richhardt goals of
questioning) for your students?
Be as specific as possible

21. Why Ask Questions?
1. To model intellectual engagement
with ideas
2. To promote and nurture ongoing
inquiry
3. To support students in constructing
understanding
4. To help students clarify their own
thinking to themselves and others

22. Example Depth of Questioning Skills
F 1 2 3 4 5
Questioning
Relevancy
Question or
not
Open or
Closed
Fat or Thin
Ability to
respond to
questions
Vocabulary
Can make
comments
with teacher
prompting
Is able to
form a
question but
sometimes
may not be
relevant
Makes
relevant
comments
with teacher
prompting
Asks relevant
questions
Uses
questions to
get more
information
Makes
relevant
comments
and concrete
suggestions
Asks open-
ended
questions
Uses prior
knowledge in
asking a new
question
Uses
vocabulary of
topic
Uses questions
to clarify
understanding
Asks fat
questions
Asks
questions
that expand
the
conversation

23. Critical and Creative Thinking Unpacking

24. Activity Part II
Using the Classroom Questions Typology Document and
Bloom’s Taxonomy Questions Stems …
Design a range of lower order
cognitive and higher order
cognitive questions you could
ask to achieve each learning goal
Use the template provided

25. Point of this …
You can’t expect to develop students to gain particular
knowledge or develop a particular skill if you haven’t
clearly articulated the learning goals and designed
possible questions you could ask

26. Today’s workshop
Questioning – why is it important?
Identifying the Intended Goals
Strategies and Resources Exploration

27. Strategies in the Classroom
• You have identified the learning goals you want to
achieve
• You have identified a potential range of lower order
and higher order questions
• Next Step is … what strategies
are you going to use to enact
your planning / thinking in
your classroom

28. Wait Time 1: the pause after asking a question, giving
students time to think about their answer
Wait Time 2: the pause after a student answers a
question - gives them time to elaborate
and be engaged
The typical length of Wait Times 1 and 2 is less than or
equal to 1 second BUT if teachers can extend their wait
times to 3 or more seconds, then...
Wait Time – the ‘miracle’ pause….

29. Wait Time – the ‘miracle’ pause….
What happens to STUDENTS when Wait Time is increased?
The variety of students participating
increases.
The length of student responses
increases.
There is a decrease in ‘I don’t know’
responses.
The number, length and appropriateness
of responses by students increases
Student to student exchanges increase
(they listen to each other more)
More inferences are supported by
evidence and logical argument.
The increase of speculative thinking
increases.
Student confidence increases.
Decreases in student interruptions Improvements in student retention
Increases in the amount and quality of
evidence students offer to support their
inferences
Achievement on assessment measures
improves.

30. Wait Time – the ‘miracle’ pause….
What happens to TEACHERS when Wait Time is increased?
Questioning strategies became more
flexible and varied
- the kind of questions asked by teachers
change (more advanced / higher order /
divergent questions)
The quantity of questions asked
decreased, while the quality and variety of
questions increased.
Expectations for the performance of
certain students seem to improve
There is greater continuity in the
development of discussion.
There is greater flexibility of teacher
responses, with teachers listening more
and engaging students in more
discussions.
Increases in the number of higher
cognitive questions asked by teachers.

31. A Questioning Friendly Classroom
How do
you do this
already?

32. A Questioning Friendly Classroom

33. No Opt Out – its not OK to not try
A sequence that
begins with a
student unable to
answer a question
should end with the
student answering
that question
as often as possible.

34. Activity Part III: Exploration of strategies
We have created the opportunity for you to learn and
contribute to one another in enacting effective
questioning in your classes
Made a range of resources /
strategies available … look
through these with your
partner and discuss and
choose what approaches
you could use to achieve
the learning goals you
identified

35. Sharing about what you learnt
What did you learn from today’s session that
you will enact in your classes?

36. Sustaining practice
Teacher learning takes time
Practice is required to put new knowledge to
work, to make it meaningful and accessible when
you need it

37. Check us out
www.intuyuconsulting.com.au