Masterful teachers don't just ask a lot of questions; they ask questions in a purposeful way. In this article, Costa and Kallick describe five strategies that can help teachers become more purposeful in designing and posing questions. One strategy is to plan questions that elicit student thinking at various cognitive levels, from simple recall of facts to more abstract thinking involving prediction, application, creativity, and evaluation. Another strategy is to build questions around positive assumptions; for example, the question "What goals do you have in mind for this project?" presupposes that the student has multiple goals, a plan of action, and a capable mind. Third, good questions should help students cultivate the dispositions known as Habits of Mind; for example, the teacher could ask "What might be some alternatives?" to encourage students to think flexibly. Questions are especially important in helping students become skilled in one of these Habits of Mind--metacognition, or thinking about thinking. Questions like "While you were reading, what was going on inside your head that enabled you to monitor your understanding of the story?" help students examine and take charge of their own thinking processes.