Blog Post # 6

Asking Questions: What questions do we ask? How do we ask?

Think back to your elementary, middle, or high school experiences. Doesn't matter which one, the question is "How many thought provoking questions were you asked"? It's okay if the answer is zero, truth is many students aren't given the chance to allow their thought process to start working. Often times teachers ask close-ended, unproductive questions, disallowing students to develop higher order thinking skills. As a future educator, I have no intentions of carrying along this tradition. So, how do we go about ending this tradition, by learning what questions to ask and how to ask these questions.

The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom

This issue is addressed in Ben Johnson's blog post "The Right Way to Ask Questions". He states that perhaps the most important question to ask is "What does a teacher asking questions of a class expect the class to learn from the questioning process?" Some teachers don't often think about what they want their students to learn from class discussions. They typically ask their students general questions, such as, "Does everybody understand?". The fact is, general questions are not a basis for assessing whether or not students understand. To appropriately check for understanding among students, teachers should ask specific questions. Well, how do educators go about doing this? There is a simple and effective strategy, researched by Mary Budd Rowe, that all teachers can use in their classrooms when asking questions. When using this approach teachers would ask a question, pause for three seconds, then call on a student. This particular approach allows for all students to begin the thinking process, because they are unaware of which student the teacher will call on. Waiting at least three seconds is important due to the fact that when a teacher calls on a particular student over 1/3 of the class has tuned out or is relieved that their name was not called. Therefore all names should be called at random, allowing all students to be engaged in the thinking process and class discussion.

Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom

Maryellen Weimer, who is the Professor of Teaching and Learning at Penn State, lists three ways to better ask questions that promote learning among students. The first action she recommends teachers to do, is to prepare questions ahead of time. Teachers spend so much time preparing content for instruction that they fail to address what types of questions they will ask their students. When teachers fail to prepare questions they may end up asking their students mundane, irrelevant questions that are not clear and only confuse their students. When a teacher takes time to prepare questions, they are able to write out the questions and check for clarity and revise the question if need be. Preparing questions also allow teachers to decide if the question needs to be asked and the appropriate time to ask the question. Her second suggestion is to play with questions. Playing with questions allows students a longer time frame to think about their answer. Rather than immediately accepting an answer, let the question go unanswered for a while and encourage your students to think about it. An example of this would be to ask a question at the beginning of class and then wait until the end of class to ask for student responses. Collect many different answers and discuss each response before stating which responses are correct. The third approach is to preserve good questions. These can be questions you asked or questions that a student has asked. Good questions can be revised, refocused, or used in another class. When a teacher keeps and shares a question proposed by one of their students, he or she shows their class that they are interested and care about what their students have to say. Ms. Weimer states that educators should also improve their questioning techniques so that students are able to see the importance of questions and how they help us learn and think. "Eventually students may start asking better questions themselves, including ones we can't answer. And those are the best questions of all".

Asking Questions to Improve Learning

In this video Joanne Chesley, MSA (Master of School Administration) Program Coordinator at North Carolina A&T State University, explains how teachers can improve their questioning skills. She focuses on open-ended versus close-ended questions. Close-ended questions are unproductive and "structures a response for the student and can be answered with one word". Open-ended questions stimulate discussion and "leaves the form of the answer up to the person responding, eliciting more thinking and yielding more information".

Asking Effective Questions

Here are some examples of types of questions that are fruitless and unproductive and questions that stimulate discussion and involve higher order thinking skills.

Teachers should avoid asking unproductive questions such as:

• Recall Questions - Obvious Answer
• Rhetorical Questions - Solely for dramatic effect
• Yes or no Questions - Doesn't inhibit discussion
• Leading Questions - Aren't open-ended 

In order to stimulate discussion and engage students, teachers should ask questions that involve higher order thinking skills such as:

• Questions that ask for student inputs - What should ___ have done? What would you do in this case? 
• Questions that ask how and why - How might this argument be made more persuasive? Why do you think that ____ made this argument? 
• Prediction Questions - What will happen next?
• Ask students to bring their own questions to class. 

What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?

Future and current teachers need to know what type of questions to ask, how to ask those questions, and when to ask those questions. While teachers should focus on content they should also allow time for planning questions. During class discussions, teachers should ask one clear and specific question at a time, making sure not to confuse their students. The questions teachers ask should be thought provoking and stimulate discussion among the students. We should not ask unproductive, general questions and then expect our students to be engaged and give thoughtful and insightful answers.