Blog Post 4

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

The Purpose of a Question

In his blog post "The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom," Ben Johnson asks why teachers ask questions in the first place. As he says, "What does a teacher asking questions of a class expect the class to learn from the questioning process?"

Teachers ask questions to ensure that students understand what is being taught. Some common approaches include asking "Does everybody understand?" or calling on a student by name to answer a question. Yet, neither of those methods are effective approaches. Students will not always speak up when they do not understand. While the one student can benefit from being called on, the rest of the class does not. So, how can teachers ask effective questions?

Ways to Ask Better Questions

1. Create questions before the lesson starts.
In her post "Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom," Dr. Maryellen Weimer urges teachers to prepare their questions ahead of time instead of thinking of questions during the lesson. Questions prepared ahead of time are likely to be more engaging that questions created on a whim.

2. Ask specific questions.
Instead of asking if everyone understands, ask specific questions about the content taught but avoid questions that require a simple fact as answer. Open-ended questions (see #4) are preferred.

3. Call on students using the questioning strategies proposed by Mary Budd Rowe.
Johnson suggests using Rowe's method to call on certain students: A teacher asks a question, waits three seconds, and then calls on a specific student to answer. All students are more inclined to think of an answer this way, even though only one student is called on.

4. Use open-ended instead of close-ended questions.
In her video "Asking Better Questions in the Classroom Part 1," Dr. Joanne Chesley discusses open-ended vs. close-ended questions. Close-ended questions are questions that can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no." Open-ended questions require an answer with a longer explanation than yes or no.

For example:

Close-ended question: Was Washington's surprise attack at Trenton after crossing the Delaware River a success?

Open-ended Question: Why was the surprise attack at Trenton a significant event of the Revolutionary War?

Chesley argues that open-ended questions should be used over close-ended questions. Open-ended questions enable students to use their creative thinking skills to provide an answer instead of simply memorizing a fact and spitting it back out when questioned. Open-ended questions help students to become active learners rather than passive learners.

5. Record and save questions.
Weimer also proposes that teachers save their questions for upcoming lessons. If a question remains unanswered, a teacher can keep the question, ask students to contemplate the question for a period of time (or use another teaching tool such as splitting students in groups or writing key words on the board), and ask it again later. Also, a teacher can save thought-provoking questions students may ask her and use it later for future lessons. This is the perfect example of how both the teacher and the student are learning from each other.

Asking students the right questions enables them to become active learners, which is what we as teachers must be pushing our students to become. As Beth Knittle says in "Education vs Regurgitation," active learners are "into learning, they [are] out of the box thinkers, connectors, imaginative, impulsive and curious. These [are] the students who [are] going to push the envelop, test the limits, create, invent and change in the world."