questions questions so many questions in school your day is filled with them you should have to find the answers to all life's mysteries and instead all you get hit with is question after question after question your teachers are always telling you that questions are important that you have to ask questions if you want to learn anything but did you ever stop to think about what makes those questions so important in the first place and how do you know what questions to ask if you ask the wrong question won't you get the wrong answer and then how are you going to learn anything there's a saying that goes there's no such thing as a dumb question while you may agree or disagree with that statement one thing is for certain all questions are not created equal there are good questions and there are not so good questions the good questions are questions we can learn from to help us become better Learners and better people the bad questions not so much but how am I to know the good sides of the bad good question Luke that's Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars movies for those of you who don't know how do we tell the good questions from the not so good questions wouldn't it be great if someone came up with a system a way of classifying questions so that we know which ones are better than others well someone did come up with such a system and his name is Arthur Costa Arthur Costa is a name known to all Avid students far and wide because his system of questioning is at the heart of what we do he's responsible for developing a system of classifying questions known as cous levels of thinking and questioning and that's what we're going to be discussing today so grab some Cornel notes and something to write with as we learn how to question our questions the first thing you want to do is grab a set of Corno notes like this one we'll be using green Corno notes in class but you can use any color you like or have available make sure you head your paper in ink name class period on today's date then we get to the topic the topic of these notes is cost's levels of thinking and questioning make sure you write that at the top the next thing we'll need is the essential question for this lesson there are two essential questions you'll want to keep at the Forefront of your mind the first is how do we ask better questions the second is what are the different levels of thinking and questioning through the course of this exercise we will learn the answers to these and other important questions because after all what's a question without an answer let's begin by talking about who's responsible for the system in the first place this is Arthur Costa Arthur Costa is an educator who has written several books about how to teach and learn through the course of his studies he's identified three distinct levels of questions that affect teaching and learning and they are known as cost's levels of thinking and questioning these three levels help students and teachers ask better more meaningful questions and of course the better your questions the more you're going to learn but don't take my word for it let's hear from the horse's mouth we're going to watch A Brief video clip in which Arthur Costa explains the importance of asking the right kinds of questions in the classroom one thing we try to do is to help Educators become more mindful of their language and when I say mindful of their language in other words they pay attention to their intention what is the intent of my language and for teachers for example part of the intent is to engage students at higher levels of thinking and so they're going to want to pay attention to the questions that they ask now teachers ask a lot of questions and sometimes they don't really think about the question that they're asking the intent of it and what effect it's going to have on kids and so in the book we try to point out that there are some structure to questions that can purposely engage kids thinking there are some question strategies questioning strategies that are purposeful in building self-esteem there are some um questioning strategies that deliberately raise kids to hire levels of cognition and so in the book we try to spell that out there's a chapter in the book that spells that out so that um teachers can become more mindful when they formulate a question and ask a question because it has intention behind it and it is linguistically structured to engage and to to Really transform kids think thank you Arthur we're now ready to explain the three levels that Costa identified level one is gathering meaning that the learner is instructed to go and find something level two is processing meaning that the learner must put some thought in in order to achieve a task and level three is applying meaning that the learner must take what he or she has learned and apply it to a different more complex situation these three levels relate to the degree of complexity of the different types of tasks in other words the higher the level the more thinking that is needed for the learner to complete the task level one tasks tend to be very simple they involve very little complex thought level two tasks are more difficult and involve more thinking and level three tasks are the most rigorous and challenging activities you can engage in as you might imagine the more you are working and thinking the more you're going to learn often you'll find that people turn these levels into a visual of a house by using rectangles for the levels and placing a triangle at the top in that visual the first level is at the bottom and we work our way up to the top and there's a good reason for that the reason why we use a house to represent these levels is because each of these levels supports one another even even though level one is at the lowest level and involves least thinking this doesn't mean that level one questions and tasks are not important on the contrary level one questions are important because they help support those other two levels if we had a house and we took out the bottom level what do you think would happen you guessed it everything else will fall apart we need level one questions to support these level two questions and we need both level one and two questions to support level three this house shows us that all three levels have to work together in order to get the most out of our questioning let's look at these levels a bit more closely level one tasks are input tasks these are tasks that are easy and involve very little thinking they might include things like gathering information or book questions and memorization in this case the information is either known or can be found easily in a book or on a website level two tasks are a bit more involved they uh involve processing they involve thinking about the information that you've gathered in level one level three is an output level this means that you're going to take the information that you've gathered and thought about and create something you're going to apply the information to a new situation and make judgments about what you've learned let's see what this might look look like in a typical classroom say a history classroom a level one question that your history teacher might ask you is who is the first president of the United States or who was the 16th president of the United States these questions are fairly basic and can be answered very quickly the information is probably already inside your brain and if it isn't you can put it there by reading a book or visiting a website but the questions involve very little complex thought a level two question is a bit more involved you might see a question like how are Lincoln and Washington similar and how are they different this question involves a bit more time effort and thought to respond and you need the information you obtained in level one to be able to answer the question the level three task is the most involved and would probably look something like this who was the better president and why did you choose him this question requires you to come up with something new your own opinion and it requires you to use the information you acquired in levels one and two this question would take the longest to answer and involve the most thought the important thing to keep in mind is that level one two and three questions are not always questions what I mean by that is Teachers can sometimes instruct you to do something using a sentence that doesn't necessarily end in a question mark for example solve for x or Define photosynthesis these will be questions that don't read as questions in these cases we would referred to the statements as tasks not questions but the levels would still be the same what gives the task its level is the verbs that the teachers use you can use a handout like this one to help you determine which verb fits into which level find the verb and you can tell what level the question is now it's your turn I want you to come up with a level one two and three question for this picture in the picture we see a scale on one side of the scale there's a gavl which is used by a judge in a courtroom on the other side is a gun which is used to shoot things by well just about anybody take a moment to look at this Photograph and see what you think it means got an idea okay now let's move the photo aside and come up with some questions in your Cornel notes write a level one two and three question about this photo aaph use your cous levels of thinking handout to help you choose appropriate words feel free to pause the video while you come up with your responses I'll just sit here and hum for a while okay you know what that's annoying just press pause again when you're ready to continue okay so here are some sample responses you don't necessarily have to have the exact same responses but they should look something like this an example of a good level one question might be what do you see in this picture an example of a level two question might be explain why the gun is lower than the gavel or compare and contrast the gun and the gavel and an example of a level three question could be hypothesize what this picture is trying to communicate notice that not all of these questions ends in question marks but all of them are appropriately leveled questions so how does this discussion of questions relate to your life as an avid student you may recall that Avid follows a wick or curriculum which stands for writing inquiry collaboration organization and reading well asking questions is a form of inquiry in fact the word inquiry literally means the act of seeking information through questioning there are many inquiry elements involved in the AVID program but none is more important than tutorials by now you should have participated in the tutorial process at least a couple of times and if you have then you know the importance of questioning questions are an important part of the tutorial process in two ways the first is at the very beginning of the tutorial process when you fill out your tutorial request form the trf always begins with an initial question that initial question that you begin with always needs to be a level two or three question and if you ever tried to fill out a trf using a really simple question then you know why the whole purpose of a trf is to give you time to work through a difficult and complex task or in other words the type of task that falls into level two or three level one tasks simply don't work here the other way questions relate to tutorials is the actual tutorial itself during a person's presentation you want to try and help the presenter without giving them the answers this is achieved by you guessed it asking questions you any question in these instances it doesn't matter if the questions are level one two or three just as long as they help the presenter answer his or her point of confusion it's a yes or no problem but of course the higher the question level the more the presenter is going to get out of the tutorial process I'm trying to find out as simple as yes or no that concludes our discussion of C's levels of thinking and questioning hopefully you've learned how to make sure that all your questions work as hard as they can because you have to ask the right questions if you want to find the right answers don't forget to take those Corel notes you just wrote and complete them by writing questions and summaries as well as any annotations and revisions thanks for for tuning in this is Mr Washington reminding you that Avid rocks because you've got atitude