Quick and Easy Questioning

Adding rigor to our classrooms has a lot to do with asking the right kinds of questions. Moving beyond recall and literal understanding questions is essential if our students are going to become the critical thinkers that college and the work place require. This outline, submitted by Mrs. Green, explains the three levels of questioning and provides examples of questions in each level. Rigorous classrooms ask significantly more level three and level two questions than level one. After reading the descriptions below, reflect on the level at which you ask most of your questions.Then consider ways to move level one questions to levels two and three.

Classification Scheme for Reading Questions
 
I. Literal Level (What it says)
These questions only require the reader to find the answer in the reading material and to recite the answer word-for-word as found or to translate the answer into one’s own words, as in:

• Direct factual questions in which the fact is given in the selection read
• Quoting the author or character in the selection
• Explaining in own words the meaning of technical terms and vocabulary word 
• Explaining in own words the meaning of a sentence or phrase 
• Listing the events that happen in a story as a basis for constructing a plot line 
• Consulting a dictionary for a definition

Sample questions: Where did David first see Norah? What does Paul steal?

II. Inferential Level (What it means)
These questions require the reader to go beyond what is written and to supply missing information or to make leaps of understanding based on the evidence in the reading and one’s own experience. At this level students discover the unstated relationships among the person, events, or ideas in the story or text. Examples are:

• Identifying the component parts of a given communication and/or determining relationships among the component parts as in:
  o Identifying assumptions or conclusions in a given communication
  o Making inferences, conclusions, or implications
  o Identifying relationships, as in:
• Cause and effect
• Sequential
• Logical
• Past-present
• Main ideas and details
• Central theme
  o Making comparisons based on analyses of relationships or other influences
  o Recognizing characterization or use of literary device
• Composing a unique communication which brings together ideas from one’s previous experience, as in:
• o Applying principles or ideas in a communication to a real life situation
• o Writing an original poem, essay, or story
• o Relating a personal experience
• o Suggesting original solutions to a problem

Sample questions: Why does David feel such an attachment to Rosemary? In what way is Caroline a dynamic character? What role does David’s camera play in the story (symbolically)?

III. Evaluative Level (Why it matters)
These questions require the reader to judge a given communication based on standards or criteria. This includes evaluating the merits of a given communication according to standards of accuracy, authenticity, relevancy, completeness, practicality, reasonableness, logical consistency, trueness to reality, morality, and beauty.

Sample questions: Do you think if Phoebe had been kept by the Ashers and raised as one of them that her quality of life would have been the same? How would the novel be different if it had been told by, say Caroline, instead of David?

**Sample questions are taken from The Memory Keeper’s Daughter.