Questioning

A Workshop Wednesday Session

Questioning

DOK (Depth of Knowledge) is a scale for questioning I utilize with teachers and students.

Level 3: Strategic Thinking Characteristics

• Requires deep knowledge
• Students encouraged to go beyond text
• Students asked to explain, generalize, or connect ideas
• Students must be able to support their thinking, citing references from the text or other sources
• Items may involve abstract theme identification, inferences between or across passages, application of prior knowledge, or text support for analytical judgment about a text

2 Strategies for increasing the rigor and use of questioning

1. Have students write their own questions relevant to the content of the class using DOK question stems.

Not only is this a great creation exercise for students but it also hyper focuses their attention on the content and what is important to know. The students find out quickly that higher level questions are not always the easiest item to write!