10 Routines to Build Students' Higher-Level Thinking Skills

The folks at the Right Question Institute think that one of the big challenges that students face is not knowing how to ask good questions. They argue that learning how to ask good questions helps build metacognition, divergent thinking, and a host more of good things. To help you teach students to ask good questions, and to build question asking into your lessons, they have gone ahead and created a step by step process to use with students. I included a bunch of excerpts from their book below– they also have a cool website with lots of examples and free materials.  

First, you start by setting a question focus: “a stimulus for jumpstarting student questions. It can be a short statement or a visual or aural aid in any medium or format that can stimulate student thinking that will be expressed through their questions. It is the opposite of using a teacher’s question to prompt student thinking” (p.28). Basically, it is not a question and it has a clear focus. They give examples like “defeating math anxiety,” “Miranda rights always protect the rights of the accused,” and “The scientific method  be followed” (p.29). The statements need to inspire discussion.

The question formulation process can be used pretty broadly in your questions to get students engaged and build their thinking skills! The process for students to produce questions is on pages 25-26 from their book– and pretty much taken verbatim from that! 

“The RQI Question Formulation Technique

Produce Your Own Questions

Four essential rules for producing your own questions:

• Ask as many questions as you can.
•  Do not stop to discuss, judge or answer the questions.
• Write down every question exactly as it is stated.
• Change any statement into a question.

Improve Your Questions

Categorize the questions as closed- or open-ended:

• Close-ended questions: They can be answered with yes or no or with one word.
• Open-ended questions: They require an explanation and cannot be answered with yes or no or with one word.

Find close-ended questions. Mark them with a c.

The other questions must be open-ended. Mark them with an o.

Name the value of each type of question:

• The advantages and disadvantages of asking close-ended questions.
• The advantages and disadvantages of asking open-ended question.

Change questions from one type to another:

• Change close-ended questions to open-ended
• Change open-ended questions to close-ended

Prioritize Your Questions

Choose your three most important questions:

Describe you chose those three as the most important” 

Plan

How are you going to use your questions?

Reflect

 Citation:

Rothstein, D. & Santana, L (2011). Make just one change: Teach students to ask their own questions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

The next series of activities are all taken from Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. They are the creators of visible thinking routines, classroom routines that help reveal students’ thinking and help students build thinking moves.

This is the tip of the iceberg from Project Zero at Harvard so check out their other activities too!

Think, Puzzle, Explore: Very similarly to See, Think, Wonder, this activity helps build engagement and get students in a problem solving and investigation frame of mind. 

Circle of Viewpoints: This helps students see the range of viewpoints and perspectives out there. You can use it for classroom discussions of hot button topics, art, or really anything where perspectives matter.

Claim, Support, Question: Wait, students are supposed to try to back up ideas with evidence? That’s supposed to be a thing? This routine helps students get in the habit of thinking about evidence and seeing their reasoning as something that evolves.

Compass Points:  Draw a compass on the board. Have students explore ideas from decisions folks are making in the books you read to an persuasive topics from chocolate milk to recess times using these four compass points.

Connect, Extend, Challenge: This is a wrap up activity for a lesson to have students reflect on and cement their new learnings. 

I Used to Think… Now I Think: This gets students in the habit of thinking about what they have learned and in the habit of seeing understanding as something that evolves. 

See, Think, Wonder: This can build excitement for a book or activity while getting students in the habit of observing the world around them and wondering about it. 

What Makes You Say That?: The best part of the activities and routines from Project Zero is how duh many of them are. This one just has you follow up on what students ask and get them into the habit of explaining their thinking. Simple, but effective!

Sorts are a way to help students make meaning of classroom information and to build higher-level comprehension skills. Depending on how they are structured, sorts can also be great ways to build in activities that don’t have right or wrong answers and that showcase the diversity of thinking in the classroom. There are two basic types of sorts

Type 1: You give the categories.

• This type of sort is often used in reading instruction and goes pretty quickly. You give students a bunch of words and a few categories. They have to figure out which word goes with which category. This is really good for building students’ vocabulary and I have seen it in Kindergarten reading classes and sixth grade Science classes. In sixth grade, the categories might be biotic and abiotic and students have to sort a bunch of terms like trees and rocks into the right categories.

Type 2: You don’t give the categories

• This type of sort takes longer but really helps with pattern building and higher-level comprehension of class material. Here you give students a bunch of words related to the topic that you are studying and ask them to figure out what categories these belong to. Generally, different students will find different categories as they focus on different attributes of the word. You can focus it by giving students directions on what types of categories they can use, but these are at their most fun when students are given free rein. You can use this in any subject—in science it could be a good lead in to the periodic table of elements (where elements are categorized by multiple aspects) or for fractions (1/3 and 2/6 could be in a category based on size or 2/3 and 2/6 could be in a category based on the size of the numerator).