Assessing the fifth graders' understanding of thick and thin questions

The fifth graders took the final assessment for the Colonial America Inquiry unit. This and the other data collected during the unit will inform how we further develop this approach toward inquiry next year. We will be continuing our work on our shared elementary library department professional and student goal, which is focused on developing student understanding and use of authentic inquiry.

Although the students' answers to the multiple choice questions gives a clear picture of their understanding and where reinforcement and continued learning is necessary, it is their responses to the thick question that get me thinking. Their individual responses are at the end of the post.


"It helps me as a researcher because if you are asked a thin question you know to look right in the text. But when you know it's a thick question you know that you will have to think."

Per usual, I threw their responses into a Wordle.

This image seems skewed by the students answering the question with a full sentence. I wanted to see more of those smaller words. So I removed the words "question" and "questions" from the answers and got this result:

I was starting to see and understand if they had a general understanding. I decided I needed to try one more thing: to remove the words "thick" and thin." Here's what I ended up with. I think it demonstrates their understanding:

The same information in a different layout:

Here are their multiple choice responses:

 Here are the students' (unedited) responses to the thick question:

Well, if you need to know an exact answer, it usually isn't in the text, like exactly how many people rode the mayflower, or if there is lots of answers like: How could the colonists have improved their relationship with the Native Americans? Thin questions are like what color was George Washington's coat. Or what was the color of coat worn by the "Red Coats" wear.

A thin question is really easy to know the answer, but a thick question is a lot harder. 

It can differentiate what is a good question to research and what is not.

Knowing the difference between thick and thin questions helps you answer questions and come up with them then you can also determine if your question is thick or thin depending on the project
the difference is that a thin question is a question that can be answered straight from the text with just a glance.  A thick question is something that you have to think deeply about and give some thought to what is the answer and sometimes even put themselves in their place to truly understand.

It helps me as a researcher because if you are asked a thin question you know to look right in the text. But when you know it's a thick question you know that you will have to think.

If you ask thick questions, you spend time researching more thick and interesting things.

It helps you as a researcher because, questions that are thick you want to put more effort into and add it to your to you report. I also helps because thin questions aren't as exiting. It will make your report so much more fun

It helps me by helping me answer the questions above, and it helps me come up with both kinds of questions (thick and thin.)

Knowing the difference between thick and thin questions helped me because if I need to find the answer to the question I know when to search the text or to use the text to help me infer. :)

It helps you because you need to know where you need to look or if you need to think. A thin question is "right there" so it often in the text. A thick question is a question that you need to "think and search because it isn't right in the text.

It helps because you know how to ask people questions and that it is good to always know how to ask questions about books or something else as well as asking people questions when they are right there.

because it depends on you turning in a good report or a bad one
Knowing the difference between a thick and thin question helps me as a researcher because it helps me think of questions while I'm reading

If I need the answer to a thin question, I know that it is in the book.
So if you can create good questions.

Knowing the difference between a thick and thin question will help you as a researcher because then it will make your time easier if you know whether you're supposed to just search in the text or if you need to really think about the question.

It can help by seeing if it was thin question not interesting

It helps you because you need to answer a question you need to know whether or not to just look back to a certain place or look around.

it helps because then you should ask the thick questions not a thin question
 It helps you as a researcher by letting you know weather you need to look back to a certain place in the text (thin question) or, you might need to think about a question and figure it out (thick question)

It helps me as a researcher because I think if it is a thick or thin question and it helps me see if I need to look in the text or think of the answer myself 

it can help you because you can know which questions are easy to answer.

It helps you develop better questions.

It helps you answer questions better

it helps me understand the question so I can make it a better answer

it helps you answer and ask good questions

so you can look certain ones up

It helps me know if I have to look back in the text for an answer. 

Also, knowing about thick and thin questions helps me understand any question I'm asking.

It will help by helping you know how much to write.

Knowing the difference between thick and thin questions helps me as a researcher because if something says write a thin question, I know not to write a really long response and if the site tells me to write a thick question  I know I have to think and do research to find my answer.

Knowing the difference between a thick and thin question can help you as a researcher because you will know to answer a question with your head or with research.

it helps because they can tell the difference from the easier to find questions and the ones that need more research

This helps me because if an author comes to the school I could do some research and make sure that I don't ask any of the questions on the authors web page.

Knowing the difference between a thick and a thin question helps me as a researcher because I know how to really think about questions and find answers after researching. 

Knowing the difference between the thick and thin question help me as a researcher because it makes you think more about the topic so you can search it up and learn something new and learn about it for thick. 

Thin questions are 'what?' 'Who?' 'When?' and thick questions are things like 'Why did this happen?'

Knowing the difference between a thick and thin question helps me as a researcher because it requires me to go back into the text to find the answers to both thick and thin questions. 

If you have a question you will know if it's worth researching
It help you because you know which question to research and which to not. 


Knowing the difference between thick and thin questions can help you know what to spend your time on when you are researching something.

Thick questions are questions that are really hard and complicated to get an answer.and thin questions are questions that are really easy.

You think what could be a question you find in a text easily or are you gonna have to think about it for yourself.

To know if you have to search far to find it. 

It helps you get a thicker question that can be very specific and if you are writing a book you can put in info that may be harder to get in a different book

It helps because you can look at a question, and look if you have to flip to a page or if you have to do some thinking and looking in books.

It can help you, because if you have a question that is thick that you are trying to figure out, it would be easier, because than you would be prepared, and know how much information, you need access to.

It helps you know if you have to search in other books for information or if you could just look it up in the book you're reading 

It can help me by knowing what I can find in the text and what could be a possible think and search question when researching a specific topic.

Knowing the difference between a thick and a thin question helps me as a researcher by letting me know what kind of question I should ask when doing research. 

it help you know what you have to do to answer the question

It can help you find the answers to questions quicker

It helps you look for the right questions.

It helps me ask questions better

If you have a thin question, and you know what type of question it is, you can look back at the text and find your answer easily. If you have a thick question, you can look back at the text for something that might help you, and then you can think about what the answer to your question. I think that was enough explaining. I hope it is. :) :) :) :) :) 

Because you do not want to research a thin question because there is one easy answer for thin questions and many for thick questions also a thick question is HARDER for research

a thin question is easy to  find in the text and answer but a thick question is a question that you have to think about 
it helps you because it helps you really comprehend the information.

I like to know what a thick and thin question is because it helps me know how I should look in the text. Thank you Ms. Reed for teaching me this, it is a very good skill to have. :-).

It helps you by teaching you how to answer certain questions.
Because it shows what is more detailed and what is more straight forward.

This will help me  because knowing the difference between a think and thin question is helpful by using research/questions that someone didn't just put in an article

Knowing the difference between thick and thin questions help me as a researcher by using research that someone can't just pick up the book that I used for research and just read that for the same exact information.

It can help you by using good information in something you are writing.  For example you might have to write a piece of writing with more than who, what ,and when information. 

You can know if you will need to go deeper into the text to find evidence or if it will take easy if it will take longer or shorter to respond.

You would know if you have to think hard for question or just find the answer in the text.

Knowing the difference between a thick and thin question  helps you as a researcher because it helps you brain to understand how to look for thick questions and makes you work harder. 

It helps because a thick question is a think and search question, and a thin question is a right there question

It helps because you can find more exact information

Because if you are assigned to look through a book and find thick and thin questions, you would actually have to know what thick and thin questions are.

Knowing the difference between a thick and thin question is important, because you can think about if you should really spend that much time on it or breeze by it. Also if you're taking PARCC or MCAS you don't want to spend so much time on one reading, you want to know how long it will take you and if you, have spent over 5min and just, figured out where to look my best guess is its a think question. knowing a thin question is helpful, because you shouldn't spend over 5 minutes on a question you should flip back and answer in like 2 minutes.