TEACHING TEENAGERS

FAT QUESTIONS FOR HIGHER ORDER THINKING SKILLS

Creating “fat” questions for the i-World B1 text

Read the text taken from i-World B1 and then complete the table below.

1) Lead-in: building connections with the

students' previous knowledge and own
experience.

The text is about real life super heroes.

How could you get your students to think about

the heroic things that people do in real life?

2) Pre-reading: building reading strategies e.g.

predicting the content of the text from the
headline, image, etc.

The picture is of a man (Christopher Reeve)

paralyzed in a wheel chair. The headline is “A
Real Life Superman”

How can you get your students to imagine the

content of the text by using the picture or the
headline?

3) LOTS: Low Order Thinking Skills –

reproducing knowledge/information from the
text.

Some “skinny” questions, which only require

LOTS, are necessary to check that students have
understood the text.

What could you ask your students to check that

they have understood?
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 TEACHING TEENAGERS

FAT QUESTIONS FOR HIGHER ORDER THINKING SKILLS

4) HOTS: High Order Thinking Skills –

producing original knowledge/information
about the text.

For the assignment, you need to think of five

“fat” questions.

What could you ask your students to make them

think more about the topics discussed in the
text?

5) Comment on choice of questions.

Why did you choose to ask the five “fat”
questions above?

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