The moment of truth is right at hand (The Band)

Great article on Edutopia by Chris Kubic about asking a key question that probes for deeper meaning.

I'm going to keep this one in mind.

Why do we never get an answer when we're knocking at the door? (Moody Blues)

My usual questions for students that I encounter in our learning centre often hover around the, "What are working on?" variety,

Not too clever, as it turns out. Recently a colleague suggested I should be asking, "What are you learning?" for a deeper dive.

One of the great secrets to fostering deep learning is the ability to help students raise new kinds of questions that they will find fascinating. - Ken Bain

Although better results have eventuated, I'm always on the look out for better follow up questions to get to some deeper understanding after the, "I'm learning about fractions" style response.

Here are some suggestions:

• How did your learning progress?
• What were the difficult aspects to this learning so far?
• What strategies did you use to get unstuck?
• How do you know that? 
• What evidence was used?   
• Why do you think that?
• What are the trends/key findings you've found so far?
• Why is that important?

The ending of the tale is the singing of the song (Graham Nash)

One week into the academic year and I'm touring classrooms to get a feel for what's happening.

I like to keep things simple. Less is more.

I aim to ask students simple questions like...

What are you working on?
What do you think about that?
Why do you think that?
How do you know this?
Can you tell me more?

At the end of the day as they go to the school vans I ask them more simple questions?

How was your day?
What was the highlight?
Why was that a highlight?

I get some great responses from seemingly simple questions.