Grant’s Braes Senior School Action Research

Issue we want to investigate

Development of questions that require higher order thinking skills from the children in an
inquiry

Introduction
This is the third year that Grant’s Braes School have been involved in the ICTPD Cluster
and the first year that we have been involved in an action research project. We are well
down the track with our inquiry learning teaching but have noticed that the children’s
questioning skills are very inadequate and have not improved over several years. We
realised that we are not doing any active teaching of questioning. If we started to do
active teaching of questioning would it improve the children’s questioning skills?
We wanted to develop questioning skills within the senior school so that the children use
higher order thinking skills to ask probing questions during an inquiry topic and therefore
develop a deeper understanding of the topic.

Rationale
The main focus of this action research was to improve children’s questioning skills through
direct teaching of questioning and therefore enhancing a deeper understanding of the
topic.

Professional Readings
After setting the premise of our research we knew we needed to do some background
reading about questions. We were lucky in that some of the speakers at the
Learning@Schools conference in Rotorua had focussed on the issue. Each staff member
involved in the research undertook to read and summarise the key ideas of a variety of
recommended papers. This summary was then shared to the others involved, in this way
we were able to reach a consensus about the types of questions we wanted to develop
in our students, a renewed impetus into the importance of developing questioning skills in
our students.

These are the main authors and their writings that we used.
1. Jamie McKenzie Questioning Website – www.questioning.org
Learning to Question, to Wonder, to Learn.
He puts forward the concept that questioning is a vital but often poor element in
discussions on thinking, indeed that ‘thinking without questioning is like drinking without
swallowing.’
So by focussing attention on the skill of asking deeper level questioning we will be
enhancing the thinking and therefore the learning that our students undertake.

2. Trevor Bond Questioning Website – see cluster website

His summary about questioning and its importance is
‘An effective question is one that returns the required information, to do this it needs to
contain the relevant contextual vocabulary and the query needs to be applied to a
source that contains the required information. These factors also need to be supported by
a range of questioner skills.’
This has a direct bearing on the Inquiry Learning model and helps to highlight the roles of
the ‘facilitator’ and the ‘learner’.
Trevor had also developed a rubric for questioning criteria.

3. E-Best Website – www.ebest.co.nz

This very informative site which also included a series of questioning types but instead of 7
only had 6 steps.
They also concluded that
‘An ‘Effective Questioner’ is one who can:
 • identify an information need
• pose a range of ‘relevant questions’
• take them to a variety of appropriate sources
• edit questions where necessary
• persist until they locate the required information’
Once again the link between the type of question asked and the learning generated
were closely linked, supporting the view that investigating and deliberately teaching
questioning was a relevant direction for our research.

4. Hooked on Thinking Website – www.hooked-on-thinking.com

Pam Hook and Julie Mills are in the business of encouraging teachers to think about what
they do and why they do it. Their website challenges, informs and gives practical ideas
that we used to help develop our criteria for questions.
Underscoring their philosophy is this quote
‘Once you have learned how to ask relevant and appropriate questions, you have
learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or
need to know - Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner in Teaching as a Subversive
Activity’

5. Questioning Strategies – www.rapides.k12.la.us/connectedmath/question.htm

This website contains groups of questions linked to Bloom’s Taxonomy levels.

Method

Grant’s Braes School Questioning Criteria

What Makes a GREAT question?
Level 1 Poses a statement or provides no response (e.g. A worm lives in
the ground)
Level 2 Any irrelevant question (e.g. Do trees lose their leaves – a
question that does not fit the set topic or problem)
Level 3 Relevant Yes/No/Maybe questions (e.g. Do bees make
honey?)
Level 4 Questions that use who, what, when, where, why, how without
relevant key words (one word answer questions – e.g. What
does it mean?)
Level 5 Questions that use who, what, when, where and relevant key
words (one word answer questions – e.g. Where do bees fly
to?)
Level 6 Questions that use how and why and relevant key words (e.g.
Why do bees carry pollen?)
Level 7 Probing questions using two or more question starters using key
words (e.g. Why do bees carry pollen and how do they use it?)
Results

Room 1 Results – Year 6

Findings

Before teaching questioning my class were predominately asking level 5 and 6

questions with a lack of probing questions.
After actively teaching the question criteria the children’s questioning is now
predominately level 7 with the children using a combination of question starters
and key words. For ex: What does a bee do with its pollen and how does it collect
it? This has lead to the children to having to find more specific information and
has lead to them having a deeper understanding of the topic.
Those children who are still at level 6 or below are not using probing questions or
are just attaching a why or how to the end of a question without going into more
detail e.g. what does a bee do with its pollen and why instead of probing more for
example … what does a bee do with its pollen and how does it collect it?
Room 2 Results – Year 5

Findings

At the beginning of this project the Y5 children were asking questions below the
expected level for their age, with the majority in the level 4 and below sector.
Although they may have included good starters they needed either one word
answers or answers that needed little investigation: e.g. What will hurt a weta?
After actively teaching the question criteria the children’s questioning has moved
to levels 6 and 7 where the use of how or why starters has required greater
research to provide the answers: e.g. Why do bees constantly leave their hives in
search of pollen and how do they find their way back to their hives?
The five children asking level 2 – 4 questions are not including keywords and are
still expecting only one or two word answers.
Room 3 Results – Year 3 and 4

Term 1 Questions (pre active questioning teaching)

Term 2 Questions (post active questioning teaching)

Findings

Before teaching questioning my class were predominately asking level 4 questions

with a lack of key words. For ex: What does it do? What is it? After actively
teaching the question criteria the children’s questioning is now predominately
level 7 with the children using a combination of question starters and key words.
For ex: What does a bee do with its pollen and how does it collect it? This has led
to the children to having to find more specific information and has helped them
develop a deeper understanding of the topic.
Room 4 Results – Year 3 and 4

Term 1 Questions (pre active questioning teaching)

Term 2 Questions (post active questioning teaching)

Findings

Before teaching questioning my class were predominately asking level 5

questions. After actively teaching the question criteria the children’s questioning is
now predominately level 6 with the children using how and why and a relevant
keyword to ask there questions (e.g. How do bees collect pollen). Some children
are now writing level 7 questions where they have used 2 question starters and
relevant key words. For ex: What does a bee do with its pollen and how does it
collect it? This has lead to the children to having to find more specific information
and has lead to them having a deeper understanding of the topic.
Reflection
Strengths
• Excellent development of
questioning skills from
beginning to end of active
teaching
• Children’s increased
understanding of topics
• Included in teaching of
inquiry topic
• Definite shift in children’s
quality of questions
• Children more aware of
questions and what makes a
great question
• Finding out and sorting out
stage were more focussed.
• Children keen to learn about
questioning
Summary
Weaknesses
• Relating to current topics –
some topics are easier for
the children to generate
questions
• Still children with low
questioning skills that need
to be addressed
• Needs time dedicated to it
to carry out in deep
teaching
• Children assessing their own
questions
New Ideas
• Needs to be regularly
revisited and taught
through-out each inquiry
• Revisit teaching probing
questions to make them a
higher quality
• Actively teach through-out
whole school
• Celebrating good
questioning when they
occur
• Reflect on Teacher’s
questions throughout the
day
• Have a ‘question of the
week’
• Link it to other areas of the
curriculum
• Include verbal questioning
sessions comparing to
written questions
• With better ‘question askers’
challenge top end
questions and focus more
on the ‘probing’ side of
questions
• Give children more
experience in assessing their
own questions and other
questions
Resources we created / used: