Matthew Flinders: Fiery or friendly.
Stage 3 English rap

Formulating Questions

Questioning is an important tool that teachers and students can use for many purposes. In this rap, various types of questions can be used to discover what students already know about Matthew Flinders and his voyages. Students can also devise questions for other students to answer. Their questions need to be written with their target audience in mind.

For example, the Rap point 1 discussion questions in the Matthew Flinders: Fiery or friendly Stage 3 English rap provide an opportunity to explicitly develop students' skills in asking questions.

The information skills process supports meeting the outcomes and formulating questions as required by Rap point 1. The process offers a framework for this task in defining the problem that the students want to pose or answer, and to locate and select relevant information. Students will then organise and compose information for other readers and communicate it via email.

A learning environment fostering the development of such skills needs to take into account:

• available resources
• students' background knowledge
• consideration for individual differences in skill development. (NSW Department of Education, Information skills in the school, 1989).

Finding out what students already know and can do

There are different ways that students' prior knowledge can be determined. Strategies such as brainstorming, collecting observational data, producing a concept map or a series of questions on a test can provide valuable information about students' background knowledge. Information skills in the school provides an idea on a range of such strategies.

Questions developed by students

There may be a need for teachers and students to explore more explicitly how to formulate appropriate questions, to cater for students' individual differences. Students will need to develop skills in devising questions that provide appropriate educational challenges to their peers. For gifted students, for example, materials that are organised around higher order thinking skills, key issues, themes and ideas are needed (Van Tassel-Baska, 1988). The rap points in the Matthew Flinders: Fiery or friendly rap are examples of questions which can be used to help develop higher order thinking skills for all students.

Questioning techniques

Teachers may need to formally teach students how to write different types of questions to elicit particular information and to be sensitive to the needs of their audience. This illustrates the importance of explicit teaching within this program. This can be achieved by modelling how to develop questions and the workshopping with students the writing of questions of differing complexity.

Questions can be conveniently classified as open or closed and of low or higher order.

Open questions are used to promote discussion or provide extended responses and typically begin with why or how. For example, why do you think Matthew Flinders joined the Royal Navy? Closed questions usually require a factual or limited response and usually begin with when or what. An example of a closed question is: When did Matthew Flinders set sail in the HMS Investigator to circumnavigate Australia?

Low level questions require remembering, observing or translating. For gifted students the emphasis should be focussed upon the higher order skills of analysis, synthesis and evaluation. All students should be given opportunities to answer higher order questions, though some will spend more time completing the lower order tasks.

It cannot be assumed that the more able students in the class have all the prescribed knowledge. Some students may have limited knowledge of Matthew Flinders but will demonstrate that they have excellent critical thinking skills, verbal ability or creativity. This is an indication that these students will benefit from a curriculum that provides more opportunity for higher order thinking.

For further information about types of questioning go to the Types of teacher questions site.

Developing questioning strategies supports students in demonstrating achievement of the following outcomes.

Focus Outcome:
Learning about Reading - Context and Text
RS3.7 Critically analyses techniques used by writers to create certain effects, to use language creatively, to position the reader in various ways and to construct different interpretations of experience.

Linked Outcome:
Learning to Read - Reading and Viewing Texts
RS3.5 Reads independently an extensive range of texts with increasing content demands and responds to themes and issues.

EXAMPLES OF RAP QUESTIONS

1a Prepare two questions that query aspects of Matthew Flinders' life. These questions can be formulated from data found on the Matthew Flinders electronic archive web site

eg. Why was Matthew Flinders captured and held as a prisoner in Mauritius?

or

eg. Outline the discoveries that Mathew Flinders made with George Bass after their meeting on HMS Reliance in 1795.

(These questions require lower order factual answers)

1b Prepare one other question to have answered, perhaps by a Flinders expert, or Trim, the cat.
Comment on interesting facts that you havewere uncovered, which have led to a search for more answers.

eg. Why was Flinders' time on Mauritius important?

or

eg. Prepare a proposal for Joseph Banks indicating why you, a young naturalist, should be included in the expeditions of the HMS Investigator.

(These are higher order questions that require a judgment about the value of Flinder's experience on Mauritius or original synthesis of information)

References

Information skills in the school, NSW Department of Education, [1989]
Van Tassel-Baska, J. Comprehensive curriculum for gifted learners. Allyn & Bacon, 1988.

School libraries: empowering learning

© 2002 NSW Department of Education and Training