Using Questions To Stimulate Critical Thinking

Look carefully at the picture shown below. Can you tell which center circle is bigger? Is it the one on the left or the one on the right? Are they both the same? It is important not to let circumstances surrounding a situation cloud your perceptions. As a homeschooling parent, you are in a great position to help your child develop these critical thinking skills. Through the use of questions, you can help your child develop the skills he needs to think critically about issues and information.

I recently read a great book called Activating and Engaging Habits of Mind by Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick. It is the second in a four book series aimed at teachers and writers of curriculum. The idea behind the series is that there are Habits of Mind such as persistence and flexible thinking that should be just as natural as other habits like brushing our teeth or being kind to people. If you are interested in becoming a better teacher, I highly recommend you read it.

After reading the third chapter - which deals with the use of questions to challenge your student’s intellect - I realized that my children often do a better job of challenging me to higher level thinking through questions than I do for them. See if this situation sounds familiar. I told my five-year old son, to put up his toys and get ready for bed. When I came back five minutes later - nothing had changed. My question for Jaden was "Why did you not pick up your toys?" As you will see below, my choice of question was poor on many counts. Not only did it put my son on the defensive, the question had no real answer and failed to engage him in thinking about the real reasons he should follow my directions and the advantages of cleaning his room. For example, you can find the things you want more easily, you won’t trip over toys on the floor, it keeps the house looking nice, etc.. Conversely, it is Jaden, more often than not, who encourages me to think critically about issues by asking questions that require me to begin processing information we observe together. Why did the sea diver catch Nemo? How do volcanoes get hot? Which whale is the biggest whale and which is the medium one? Why are killer whales called whales when they are really dolphins?

The information in this article will help you in your use of questions as you teach your child. It will also help you evaluate curriculum. Once you are aware of all three levels of thinking, you can look carefully at the types of questions used in a curriculum to see if they encourage all three levels or stop at the first or second level. You will be surprised what you find once you know what to look for.

Questions To Avoid

Look carefully at the type of questions you are asking your child. Many types of questions actually limit your child’s thought process or downright confuse your child. Here are 5 types of questions to avoid using in your academic instruction. It is not that you never use any of these types question, because there are times when verification and closed questions might be ok. For example, "What was the name of the boy you met at the park?" or "Do you remember the months of the year?" The idea is that in general these types of questions do not engage higher levels of thinking.

1. Verification questions, the answers to which are already known by you or your student:
   • What is the name of . . .?
   • How many times did you . . .?
2. Closed questions, which can be answered "yes", "no", or "I can":
   • Can you recite the poem . . .?
   • Can you tell us the name of . . .?
   • Do you remember . . .?
   • Can you state the formula for . . . ?
3. Rhetorical questions in which the answer is given within the question:
   • In what year was the War of 1812?
   • How long did the Seven Year War last?
   • Who led Sherman’s march through Georgia?
4. Defensive questions, which lead to justification, resistance, and self-protection:
   • Why didn’t you complete your homework?
   • Why would you do a think like that?
   • Are you misbehaving again?
5. Agreement questions, the intent of which is to invite others to agree with an opinion or answer:
   • This is really the best solution, isn’t it?
   • Let’s do it my way, okay?
   • We really should get started now, shouldn’t we?
   • Who can name the three basic parts of a plant? Root, stems, and leaves, right?

Challenging Children to Complex and Critical Thinking

Gifted children are alert to cues in your speech and behavior that tell them how to behave or think. You should carefully craft your language and specifically your questions to engage your child in complex and critical thinking. To do this, you must engage your child in three levels of questions: data gathering, processing, and applying. All three levels are important, and you should pose questions that elicit all three types of responses.

Data Gathering Questions

These questions are designed to bring forth the information, experiences, or feelings that your child has acquired in the past. They may be designed to stimulate the gathering of this data. Here are some sample questions along with the cognitive processes they elicit:

• Name the states that border California. [Naming]
• How does the picture make you feel? [Describing]
• What word does this picture go with? [Matching]
• Define the word haggard? [Defining]
• What did you see the man doing in the film? [Observing]
• Which ball is the blue one? [Identifying]
• How does the Gettysburg address begin? [Reciting]
• How many coins are in the stack? [Counting]

Processing Questions

There are many ways to pose questions that cause students to process data. One common method is to seek a cause-and-effect relationship, or maybe asking a student to analyze, summarize or contrast. Examples of these types of questions include:

• In what ways is the Civil War like the Revolutionary War? [Comparing]
• What suggests to you that Columbus believed he could get to the east by sailing west? [Explaining]
• From our experiments with food coloring in different temperatures, what might you infer about the movement of molecules? [Inferring]
• How might you arrange the rocks in order of size? [Sequencing]
• What do you think caused the liquid to turn blue? [Explaining]
• What other machines work the same way this one does? [Making Analogies]
• What are some characteristics of Van Gogh’s painting that make you think this is his? [Distinguishing]
• What might you do to test your idea? [Experimenting]
• In what ways are pine needles different from redwood needles? [Contrasting]
• What data are we going to need to solve this problem? [Analyzing]

Applying Questions

These types of questions are designed to have students move beyond the concept or principle and to think creatively and hypothetically, use their imagination, or make a judgment. These questions build upon and presuppose both data gathering and processing. Examples include:

• What do you suppose would happen to our weather if a high-pressure area moves in? [Forecasting]
• If our population keeps growing, what do you suppose life will be like in the 22nd century? [Speculating]
• What do you think will happen if we put this in the refrigerator? [Predicting]
• Imagine what life would be like with no laws? [Imagining]
• What do you think would happen if we put a saltwater fish in a tank of fresh water? [Hypothesizing]

Conclusion

One more note about asking questions. Be careful not to rush your child when asking questions. Ask a question, and then wait. At first this may feel uncomfortable, but over time you and your child will become more comfortable with it. The higher level questions, especially, will require more thought from your child, and you should not rob them of this benefit by rushing them to an answer.

If you want your child to develop her ability to think critically and at a complex level, it is important to learn how to pose meaningful questions. By carefully crafting questions that stimulate data gathering, processing, and application, you can help your child to develop the critical thinking skills that will help her throughout life.

The ideas in this article and all of the sample questions came from the book Activating and Engaging Habits of Mind by Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick.

The picture of the circles was used, with permission from http://www.coping.org.