Module 3 - Curriculum-Framing Questions to Support Thinking Skills
Activity 3.2
Asking Questions in the Classroom
Step 1: Understanding Open and Closed Questions
Questions are what we often use to help our learners think through a problem or issue. If our questions are not designed carefully, we most likely will not get the result we intend from our learners. As we saw in the previous activity, different types of questions accomplish different tasks. Fact-finding, interpretive, and reflective questions, for example, all serve different purposes and require different thinking skills. We can organize these questions into two basic categories: closed questions and open questions.
Closed questions:
- Test factual knowledge
- Contain a limited range of possible correct responses
- Example: What lives in the rainforest?
- Guide learner thought
- Provide learners with the knowledge base to answer other questions
Open questions:
- Build upon factual knowledge
- Require research, investigation, and reflection prior to answering fully
- Have many different answers, promoting learner discussion, debate, and inquiry
- Necessitate learners to go deeper into a topic—expand their thinking
- Call for learners to construct their knowledge as they answer the question
- Often start with key words such as why and how:
- Why questions often require looking at relationships among variables and analyzing information
- How questions could lead to problem solving and synthesizing information
- Other key words can also be used in open questions, but with less frequency
- Which questions may lead to thoughtful decision making, and what questions could lead to reflection
- Example: Why is the rainforest important to us?
Closed
questions that ask learners to understand facts and procedures are
important, but if learners do not have a larger concept to connect
those facts to, the importance of those facts will not be understood
and the facts will not be be retained or used in a meaningful way.
The new science of learning does not deny that facts are important for thinking and problem solving. Research on expertise…demonstrate that experts' abilities to think and solve problems depend strongly on a rich body of knowledge about subject matter (e.g., Chase and Simon, 1973; Chi et al., 1981; deGroot, 1965). However, the research also shows clearly that 'usable knowledge' is not the same as a mere list of disconnected facts. Experts' knowledge is connected and organized around important concepts… - Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, How People Learn, p. 9 |
Effective open-ended questions are especially important when using ICT in learning. Instead of working on copy-and-paste projects, learners should be required to use higher-order thinking skills to dig deeper into and analyze the facts in order to make well-founded conclusions and see the bigger picture.
Click here to read about the Opens Continua
Note: You may also want to review the resources on questioning available at: www.intel.com/education/designprojects
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Quick Reflection
Discuss with a partner the following:
What is the "right" balance between closed and open questions for your classroom?
- How can you make sure that learners are really thinking more deeply when using open questions?
Step 2: Reflecting on Questions Used in Your Classroom
Think about the questions you ask in a typical day in your classroom. Consider the questions on the worksheet, Reflecting on Questions.
Next: Proceed to Activty 3.3
