Three times a week, we do inquiry days, where students begin with their own question in either social studies or science and they research it, summarize it and then ask further questions. While my initial goal involved teaching bias, loaded language and summarization, I soon realized that students were growing the most in their ability to ask critical thinking questions.

Feedback on questions: I highlight their questions in Google Docs and leave comments on their blogs with very specific feedback.

Sometimes I'll ask a really lame question and then say, "Someone tell my why that question sucked?" or I'll ask a deeper question and say, "Why was that a hard question to answer?" The goal is to get them to see deeper questions and to also think about why a question is deep or shallow.

Some students have a really hard time with questioning strategies.

I teach students about inquiry, clarifying, critical thinking and inference questioning.

Students sometimes ask me questions. Other times they ask partners or small group questions. Still other times they ask the questions to the whole class.

Technology allows students to take their time in crafting a question while having access to the questions of their peers.