Thinking Skills and Levels of Questions
The aim of classroom questioning is not to determine whether students have learned something (as would be the case in tests, quizzes, and exams), but rather to guide students to help them learn necessary information and material.
Questions should be used to teach students rather than to just test students!
Teachers frequently spend a great deal of classroom time testing students through questions spending more than 90 per cent of their instructional time testing students. Most of the questions teachers ask are typically factual questions that rely on short-term
memory. The result is a classroom in which there is little creative thinking taking place.
One factor is key in the successful classroom:
students tend to read and think based on the kinds of questions they anticipate receiving from the teacher. If students are constantly bombarded with questions that require only low levels of intellectual involvement (or no involvement whatsoever), they will tend to think accordingly. Conversely, students who are given questions based on higher levels of thinking will tend to think more creatively and divergently.
Benjamin Bloom developed a classification system we now refer to as Bloom's Taxonomy to assist teachers in recognizing their various levels of question-asking (among other things). The system contains six levels, which are arranged in hierarchical form, moving from the lowest level of cognition (thinking) to the highest level of cognition.
Questions should be used to teach students rather than to just test students!
Teachers frequently spend a great deal of classroom time testing students through questions spending more than 90 per cent of their instructional time testing students. Most of the questions teachers ask are typically factual questions that rely on short-term
memory. The result is a classroom in which there is little creative thinking taking place.
One factor is key in the successful classroom:
students tend to read and think based on the kinds of questions they anticipate receiving from the teacher. If students are constantly bombarded with questions that require only low levels of intellectual involvement (or no involvement whatsoever), they will tend to think accordingly. Conversely, students who are given questions based on higher levels of thinking will tend to think more creatively and divergently.
Benjamin Bloom developed a classification system we now refer to as Bloom's Taxonomy to assist teachers in recognizing their various levels of question-asking (among other things). The system contains six levels, which are arranged in hierarchical form, moving from the lowest level of cognition (thinking) to the highest level of cognition.