Writing Driving Questions

We were lead in staff development on Michael Gorman's work regarding Writing Driving questions.

It is interesting because as teachers we ask many questions on a daily basis. Apparently the average teacher asks 350 questions a day! And most of these questions are directed.

We want to focus on developing higher level thinking skills in our students, therefore it's important that we consider how we question them. Taking some time to reflect on our own questioning techniques is valuable as is looking closely at the differences between directed and open ended questions.

Directed questions:

• are based on facts.
• have one correct response.
• support students to understand something on a deeper level.
• aid students in understanding key facts.
• give teachers knowledge of what a student knows or is able to recall.
• are important as students need to know factual information before being able to answer         open ended questions confidently.
• limit only some to be correct in their response.
• guide students thoughts and encourage them to make connections.

Open ended questions:

• are based on concepts or ideas
• have at least one correct answer
• encourage all students to participate.
• can be a focus of a project.
• provide discussion and a structure that assists understanding of topics
• require research. investigation, or reflection before responding.
• encourage innovation.
• have many possible answers.
• allow deeper thinking.
• could be a hypothesis, opinion, concept or idea.
• can be challenging.
• prompt students to expand what they think about something.

Both question styles have their place. In fact it would be fair to state that one style supports the other, and if asked effectively we can promote deeper thinking in students while also teaching them key skills/ facts. When we culminate both question styles we can focus on creating a driving question to assist with a project to which answers are increasingly complex.

When co-creating our driving questions we need to:

• look for big concepts/ ideas.
• brainstorm possible questions and connect ideas.
• review questions.
• consider how exciting questions might be for students.
• ensure our questions motivate students and are connected to key understandings.
• share ideas which students to get their opinions on what will motivate them more.

Following this meeting I enjoyed further reading of:  Andrew Miller who is a consultant for the Buck Institute for Education, an organization that specializes in project-based curriculum.