Questioning Skills

Questions to Develop Thinking

How it all started ...

•

From the beginning of Term 1, children in Room 6 began takingpart in discussions about thinking. These discussions arose as wewere starting to explore ideas about New York. One of theconcerns that arose as we began to formulate questions, wasthe need to develop questions that were useful for thinking.Through discussion, children were able to identify that differentquestions may be useful for different things (such as quicklygathering information, questions for quizzes etc), but it was thequestions that would get us thinking that would help us todevelop ideas.

Visually Representing Thinking

•

Children began creating visual representations that showedlevels of thinking. After discussing the concept of a shallowend / deep end swimming pool to represent shallow and deepthinking, children came up with a wide range of images thathad numerous levels of thinking. While this particular discussionwas very useful, it occurred near the end of term, and thereforechildren had not necessarily had enough time to grasp thelinking of questions to each of their stages as well as I wouldhave liked. An example of this was that children were able toidentify questions that would fit in the lower level thinking stages,but needed to have some higher level thinking questions asexamples, which would have given them something to work towards.