Talk:OER4Schools/Questioning

Proposed activity for covering the information on page 3.

There are 14 short points for participants to get their head around. These could be divided up amongst the group, so one point each or one between two depending on the group size. Participants should read and understand their point, perhaps coming up with an example to help clarify it to the rest of the group. After allowing participants a few minutes to understand tier point, ask them in turn to stand up and explain it to the rest of the group. By the end of this activity the participants will have verbally presented the contents of page 3 of the document in a way that should make the material easily accessible and easier to remember.

Reading (20 min) questioning the questions. Read pages 2 and 3 of the "Questioning the Questions" handout (Questioning the Questions ^(info)).

Questioning and Bloom's taxonomy

You will need one copy of pages 4, 5 and 6 (deals with Bloom's taxonomy) per group for these card sort activities along with some scissors.

Cut out the different sections so that there are six equal sized pieces of paper, each with one section each on it - these will be referred to as the question type cards. There are a number of activities you could do to help you get to grips with the material that these pages cover and to help you develop a deeper understanding of the types of questions you can ask students and the level of demand of different types of questions:

Activity 1

In your groups, sort the question type cards in order of increasing demand on the student - be prepared to discuss with group members why you think one type of question is more demanding than another.

Activity 2

Turn the question type cards upside down and place them in a pile. Members of the group take it in turn to pick a card from the top of the pile and read one piece of information from the card from either the verb, question or example columns. Other members of the group try to guess what question type this card is. Be prepared to discuss why you think a question is a particular type. Cards can be returned to the pile at the end, shuffled and a different piece of information read out next time a card is turned over. Continue to play the game until all members of the group can spot the question types easily.

Activity 3

Now that everyone is familiar with the question types and hierarchy, divide out the cards and working in pairs within your group come up with two additional questions for your particular question types and write them on the cards that you have. Try out your questions on the rest of the group and see if they can classify the question type correctly.

These are the question types in order of increasing demand:

LOW LEVEL

• remembering
• understanding
• applying
• analysing
• evaluating
• creating

HIGH LEVEL

Both open and closed questions may be at any level of the taxonomy.

An open low-level question might be: "What is an example of an adverb?"

An open high-level question might be: "What are some ways we might solve the energy crisis?"

A closed low-level question: "What are the properties of a square?"

A closed high-level question: "Given the data before you, would you say that mercury is a metal or a non-metal?"