Higher-Order Questions
Recommended Practice: Use higher-order questions to help students build explanations.
- Overview & Tools: Video overviews and professional development materials
- Learn What Works: Expert interviews about higher-order questions
- See How It Works: Videos and sample materials from schools
Using Higher-Order Questions to Help Students Build Explanations
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > Overview & Tools
View a multimedia overview to learn how teachers can promote critical thinking skills by posing higher-order questions and encouraging student explanations.
Resource Type
Overview
Key Concepts in Using Higher-Order Questions
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > Learn What Works
Listen as Dr. Annemarie Palincsar discusses the importance of asking higher-order questions and how to build opportunities for deep explanations in the classroom.
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Expert Interview
Instructional Strategies at a District Level
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > See How It Works
In this video interview, a district curriculum director shares lessons learned about successfully implementing instructional strategies, like the use of higher-order questions, across many schools...
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School Example
Response Groups: Eliciting Explanations in History
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > See How It Works
History teacher Matt Moorman describes how he uses higher-order questions to engage students in critical thinking about important historical concepts and to help students to internalize the...
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School Example
Essential Questions: A Schoolwide Approach
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > See How It Works
Administrators at one school describe how they support the use of higher-order questions through professional development that focuses on curriculum planning and effective instructional...
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School Example
Opportunities for Student Explanations
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > See How It Works
In this video students share the culminating project of a curriculum unit: museum exhibits designed to answer "essential questions." Students practice giving explanations that demonstrate their...
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School Example
Questioning in a Socratic Seminar
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > See How It Works
Watch how this fourth-grade teacher uses a line of questioning in a structured, text-based discussion to help students recognize important elements and themes in a piece of art. Related...
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School Example
In Front of the Class: Students' Whiteboard Explanations
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > See How It Works
A physics teacher describes how he organizes whiteboard presentations to give his students an authentic forum for explaining their problem solving and answering higher-order questions. Related...
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School Example
Student Work: Explanation of Math Answer
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > See How It Works
Just because a subject area involves problems with numbers and graphs doesn't mean students can't be asked to generate in-depth answers. View this sample student response to an algebra problem,...
Resource Type
Sample Material
Sample Essential Questions by Grade Level
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > See How It Works
View examples of essential questions created by teachers at Normal Park Museum Magnet Elementary and see how they organize their science and social studies-based modules around these...
Resource Type
Sample Material
Lesson Plan: Socratic Seminar Planning Form
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > See How It Works
See how teachers at Normal Park Museum Magnet Elementary plan for Socratic Seminars by identifying main concepts, questions, and pre- and post-activities to maximize the effects of using...
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Sample Material
Classroom Observation: Tracking Questions and Responses
Organize Your Teaching > Higher-Order Questions > Overview & Tools
In teams, use this observation form to observe ongoing questions and responses generated by class instruction and then provide feedback on impact and possible improvement.
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Tool
