Using higher order questioning to accelerate students’ growth in reading

Peterson, Debra S., & Taylor, Barbara M. (2012). Using higher order questioning to accelerate students’ growth in reading. The Reading Teacher, 65(5), 295-304.


This article describes how elementary teachers in diverse urban schools worked to transform the kinds of talk they did with children about texts, with the goal of raising those students’ thinking to higher levels than had been reached before. The emphasis is on what is called “higher-order questions.” The authors define higher-order questioning as questioning that “requires students to think at a deeper level and to elaborate on their oral and written responses to literature” (p. 297). First, students were taught to respond to higher-order questions both orally and in writing. The ultimate goal, though, was to teach students to generate their own higher-order questions about texts, and then to use their new skills in generating and responding to higher-order questions to engage in student-led, student-centered small group discussions about texts. The article includes several vignettes that capture the kinds of small group discussions the researchers observed.

The authors generated three categories which they used to classify the types of higher-order questions they observed: 1) Theme, 2) Character Interpretation, and 3) Making connections to students’ lives. The texts used with the children were primarily fiction or at least narrative texts. I caught myself speculating on what sorts of categories might have been generated for higher-order questions about nonfiction/expository texts. With the current stress on increasing the emphasis on nonfiction texts, even in the earliest grades, I wondered why the authors chose to focus on narratives. Narrative texts are often thought to be easier to comprehend than expository texts (though I’m not sure I completely believe that is true), and perhaps because this new emphasis on higher-order questions probably was a big change in how reading comprehension was perceived in these elementary schools, working with fiction was seen as the first step. We don’t really get the full rationale for that in this article, though reference is made to an online version of this research report that may contain that information; I plan to check that out.

Other questions raised for me by the article involve my desire for more information on assessments. The students here are described as “making accelerated growth in their reading achievement” (p. 299). On what basis was that assessment made? How exactly was the success of this push for higher-order questioning documented? I realize that this information may well be in the longer online article, but even brief references to the assessments used here would be helpful and desirable, and would have strengthened the article while not necessarily taking up much space or having to go into excruciating detail.

Overall, though, I found the article helpful and hopeful. It provides concrete, authentic examples of what higher-order thinking and talk might sound like in an elementary classroom. Children are portrayed having meaningful and engaging conversations about literature, and that is a breath of fresh air. The recently adopted Common Core Standards may be an impetus toward raising the bar on student thinking, and those standards are referenced briefly in the article. My biggest worry relevant to the push for “higher-order” thinking is that as with any reform linked to high-stakes testing, allocation of scarce resources, and political agendas, there will be the inevitable push toward all things that can be quantified, packaged, and sold. I hope the kinds of change that led to the kinds of student talk that we see in this article won’t ultimately be reduced to formulaic models, scripts, and programs. I worry, but I’m still hopeful that the kind of collaborative work teachers did here to change the way they and their students thought about and talked about texts will be the trend that spreads in this country. The key here was the development of human resources and learning, not the development of materials and models. As long as we as educators keep asking some higher-order questions of our own, we will be on the right track.