Teaching for Information Literacy

Questions may be the most powerful technology we have ever created" says Jamie McKenzie, author of Beyond Technology: Questioning, Research and the Information Literate School.

In an information and technology rich world it is easy for students to cut and paste the information they find for their fact-based assignments and projects. High School teacher-librarian, Joyce Valenza asks, with basic information so easy to access, shouldn't we now focus our students attention on questions that will challenge them to use information meaningfully - to think, analyze, evaluate and invent?"

Before students can start to ask good questions they need to see it modeled by their teachers. Tips for Teachers: Asking Good Questions, provides some questioning strategies that provoking high-level thinking. Jamie Mackenzie's Questioning Toolkit describes the many different types of questions that can be introduced as early as kindergarten to enable students to have powerful questioning technologies and techniques with them as they arrive in high school.

San Bonito High School's What I Want to Find Out: Questions, describes the difference between 'thin' and 'thick' questions and provides examples of how to turn a thin question into a fat one.

Creating Essential Questions outlines the key components of essential questions

Not All Questions are Created Equal

In his presentation handout, Designing Research Projects that Kids (and Teachers) Love, Doug Johnson outlines four levels of questions.

Questioning Flow (pdf) - a series of questions for middle and high school students to use when reading a selected passage.