Question Routines Sequence

Use this sequence to plan for, reflect on, and integrate Question Routines in your classroom:

1. Use Question Routines in an ongoing and routine manner.

2. Allow space for movement, collaboration, and sharing of ideas. Prepare yourself for a shift in energy in the class- room as well as a shift in the roles of the teacher and the learner.

3. Create physical or virtual space to document and show evidence of Question Routines in action.

4. Show an interest in the ideas and questions your students share. Your curiosity will have a massive impact on where the questions that are asked will take you

Question Continuum

The Question Continuum is a foundational routine and is a perfect starting point with your learners on their journey to question competence! This routine helps learners deepen their understanding of closed and open questions as well as start to notice the language of questions as they place them along the continuum between these two types.

Question Triangle

The Question Triangle is a core routine to add to your tool kit! This series of moves supports learners to think about the questions they are asking, engage in sorting and reflecting, and become co-designers in the process of unit and inquiry planning. It is high yield for learners and expandable for educators in all of the best ways.

Question Sort

The Question Sort Routine is an excellent framework for helping students organize their questions. Teachers can use this to help students find alignment with curriculum goals, workshop questions for clarity, and watch learners find personal relevance in pursuing their curiosities, all of which can lead to fruitful inquiry planning.

Question Quadrant

The Question Quadrant extends learners' understanding of generating meaningful and purposeful questions and helps them develop their role as co-designers of their learning journeys while supporting educators to reflect deeply throughout the process of learning about their learners.

Question Pyramid

This structure is the perfect extension for routines like the Question Triangle, Question Continuum, or the Question Sort. It helps students tune into their curiosities while supporting educators to plan by aligning curricular competencies and learning targets in meaningful and agentic ways.

Question Staircase

The Question Staircase is a playful and intentional routine that provides the structure and scaffolding for students to categorize their questions beyond closed and open, towards higher-order thinking. This routine invokes the skills of Bloom’s Taxonomy specifically: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. The skills ascend in order of depth and complexity, hence the representation of this routine as a staircase with remembering usually added as the first “step” or category. As this routine can be quite sophisticated, it may be challenging for a primary years audience.

Question Pencil

The Question Pencil Routine is designed to help students create more powerful and targeted questions to develop their curiosities and direct their learning. The clear framework this routine provides connects question stems with question purpose.

Question Hexagons

Based on the principles of hexagonal planning in teaching, the Question Hexagon Routine helps students work on connections between questions and the bigger concepts they are learning. As participants bring concepts together, the connecting sides of the hexagons provide a visual of the thinking connection they are exploring. Adding Thinking Skills Arrows based on skills that help students increase complexity in their questioning and thinking competence sets this routine apart!

Question Timeline

The Question Timeline Routine happens over a span of time and is an ongoing fixture in a classroom for the length of a unit of study or an ongoing inquiry. This is a collaborative routine that includes input and questions from all learners. The Question Timeline allows you to spiral back and reflect on the questions generated early in the process and to create new ones. As new learning occurs, the questions will change, and this routine makes those changes visible.

Question Buddies

Question Buddies is not a routine but a foundational practice that can be leveraged throughout your questioning work with students. This practice helps foster psychological safety and confidence among collaborators in the classroom. Question Buddies is a way to support students in taking risks with their learning, becoming more critical and interrogative about their thinking, becoming more reflective about their ideas and questions, and contributing to a culture of learning that is based on voice, choice, and agency.