Thick Questions and Critical Thinking

Asking and documenting questions is a great routine to incorporate into any classroom. It is also one of the first steps in the inquiry process. I work with some fantastic colleagues who not only encourage kindergarten, grade 1 and grade 2 students to ask questions, they also make sure the student's questions are visible. Because of this, my grade 3 students have been extremely vocal with their curiosities. They are equally enthusiastic to write their questions down and post them around the classroom.

To build on this, we have been working on asking "thick" questions that better lend themselves to inquiry.

Thin questions:
-require a one-word answer
-can easily be answered with a simple google search

Thick questions:
-usually require a detailed answer
-inspire greater research
-result in a more in-depth understanding

To help students with this, we reviewed the language for thick questions.

The students then each took some time to think about the wonderings they have in connection with our current unit of inquiry about quality of life. Each student wrote down 3-5 thick questions on different post-it notes.

Then, students picked their top 2 questions and crumpled up their other wonderings. The class loved doing this! It's a great way to make a kinesthetic connection to critical thinking.

As a class, we discussed each question using the Question Sorts Routine. Following, we sorted the questions into key concepts. In the end, we had some awesome guiding question to post on our "I Wonder" chart on our inquiry board to help jump-start the unit.