Types of High-Level Questions – SAVE FOR REFERENCE!
Don’t Use
Use
Use
LITERAL
INFERENTIAL
THEMATIC
LEVEL ONE ?’S
LEVEL TWO ?’S
LEVEL THREE ?’S
“ON THE LINE”
“BETWEEN THE LINES”
“BEYOND THE LINES”
Knowledge questions; can be
answered by skimming the
text or through research;
found right in the text (on the
line).
Who? What? Where? When?
THESE ARE NOT HIGH-LEVEL
QUESTIONS!
Examples from By the Waters
of Babylon:
What are the laws?
Who is allowed to touch
metal?
Inference questions require the
reader to make educated
guesses supported by the text.
Thematic questions connect the
text with real life and universal
themes.
Inferences are assumptions
based on evidence from the text
with use of background
knowledge for support.
How does this text connect with
my life, my values, or with life in
a larger sense for all human
beings?
These questions can be
answered by interpreting,
classifying, comparing,
contrasting, and finding patterns.
These are “interpretive”
questions.
(between the lines)
These are open-ended questions
that go beyond the text. They
are intended to provoke
discussion, and there is often no
right or wrong answer.
(beyond the lines)
For example:
What does a detail or image
represent, suggest, or personify?
Examples from By the Waters of
Babylon:
Why does the narrator’s father
seem to know the narrator will
become a priest?
How is the narrator different
from his brothers?
These questions begin with ideas
FROM the text but move from
the “what?” of the text to the
“so what?” of why what happens
in the text is meaningful outside
the story itself.
Sometimes text references from
a particular page are not always
included, but the text is referred
to in a more general sense to
show a deeper connection to the
work as a whole. For instance,
an entire chapter might bring up
a question for discussion.
(Use “how” and “why” questions
instead of who, what, where, and Examples from By the Waters of
when…)
Babylon:
In any society, why must a priest
know its many secrets?
How are sons influenced by the
kind of character their father
possesses?
Adapted from - http://www.canyonisd.net/159320410152510937/lib/159320410152510937/Kirkpatrick_Summer_AP.pdf