Questioning Tips

| Teaching Tips index | Science Education home page| Methods Syllabus |

Crafting an Effective Question

Ask yourself....
• Is the question directly related to the lesson objective?
• Is the question expressed as clearly, concisely, and as unambigously as possible?
• Does the question actively engage learners' mental energies?
• Does the question evince overt student behavior that I can monitor to check for learner understanding?
• Does the question serve to focus, maintain, or recall student attention?
• Does the question generate critical thought?
• Avoid simplistic questions with obvious answers. These merely train inquiry-oriented students not to answer. And when no one answers, you will most likely find yourself answering it yourself, further reinforcing student habits of silence.
• Is the question specific enough that students will know where the target is, or is it a shotgun question to which possible answers might come from any arbitrary direction? (Example of a shotgun question: "What is a cell?") Do the work necessary to lift students to a mental plane where significant questions will be possible. Craft questions that are specific enough to reinforce desired categories and productive directions of thought.
• Avoid filler phrasings like "Any questions?" or "Does everyone understand?" Take a deep breath instead! Specify the questions by adding significant qualifying phrases. Craft specific questions that will reveal whether they understand--so that both they and you will know what they have learned.

Assessing a Questioning Strategy

Reflect on your questioning strategy in advance!
Coming up with the best possible questions is too important to save until the last moment, or to attempt only on the fly. Plan them when you plan your objectives! Write them down in large font and bold print!

• Am I asking questions to teach, and not just for simple recall or cheerleading?
• Ask questions when presenting new material to stimulate reflection on why things are the way they are. Use questions not merely to focus attention or check recall of a previous explanation, but as part of the actual explanation of the lesson. Challenge yourself to instruct through questioning.
• Effective questioning techniques sustain learning processes by stimulating students to actively focus their thoughts on the objective.
• Receive incorrect, undesired, or unanticipated responses with reinforcement of the student's willingness to actively participate. Any response is better than no response at all. Do not dismiss their contribution, but appropriate something positive in their train of thought to lead the class back to your objective.
• Answer questions with questions: "What do you think?" Direct the new questions either to the initial questioner or to the rest of the class. New questions lead to further insight into the problems presented or solved by the lesson material.
• Instead of repeating an explanation in a slightly different way, turn the explanation into a question: "Listen to another explanation, and then tell me whether it means the same thing..."
• Does your questioning strategy model effective inquiry for students' application to other circumstances?
  A questioning strategy models inquiry, which leads to cognitive transfer that develops students' critical thinking.
• Do my questions, taken as a whole, emphasize higher order thinking or information-oriented short-answer and recall?
• Are the questions properly sequenced, and introduced at appropriate times?
• Is there a general pattern of progression through the lesson?
  1. From more frequent short-answer questions at the beginning (designed for short teacher responses)...
  2. To more frequent higher-order questions for lesson development (Socratic)...
  3. or open-ended application toward the end?
  4. And not too many questions of the same type back-to-back?

Monitoring Teacher Questioning

• Enjoy silences. Most thinking occurs then. Be generous with pauses. They give students opportunity to question. If you are not generating interesting student-questions, perhaps they do not have time to think of them!
• Pause between questions.
• Do I ask the question first, pause, then scan the room, and finally call upon a student?
  • Pause after asking a question before calling on a student to answer. Then call on a particular student by name. Say: "Listen to this question. Then I will call on someone by name after stating the question." or "Don't answer unless your name is called." In very little time students will know not to spontaneously shout out answers.
  • Waiting to call on them by name can help them (and other students) to think clearly before being put on the spot.
  • If this wait time is given consistently, then all students will attend. If the students' names are habitually given at the same time as the question, others may stop paying attention once someone else's name is called.
  • Or less often, to jolt someone awake, one may ask the question after calling out the student's name first, then adding "do you agree or disagree...?"
• Do I allow enough wait time after a student responds?
  • Pause after a student responds! Give him or her time to elaborate, extend, transfer, interact.
  • If the student's answer is incorrect, a pause may be all that is necessary for the student to recognize the misconception and correct himself--or you may help them with a leading question.
  • Other students will have time to process the student's answer.
  • Do not repeat the student's answer, for this implies that only "teacher talk" is important, and trains students to tune out when another student is responding. Pause instead. When necessary, you or another student may ask the student to repeat his or her answer.
• Is there a balance of questions directed to individuals vs. the whole class?
  • Do I evenly distribute questions to students who are not always right, pleasant, enthusiastic, or attractive? Am I involving Silent Sally and Withdrawn Willie as much as Vivacious Vicky and Enthusiastic Eddy?
  • Make checkmarks on a class role to ensure that your questions are comprehensively distributed.
• Am I allowing students to answer my questions instead of answering them myself?
  If a question is important enough to ask, it's important enough to allow time for students to answer!
• How do I attend to the student processing the question? Do I listen to a student who is processing the question, ready with eye-contact, feedback, encouragement both with words and body language, adjustments of vocabulary or the frame of reference, etc.?
• Seek student inquiry!
  • Praise well-formed questions, or questions that show student comprehension of some aspect of the lesson. Without the humility of questioning there can be but little understanding.
  • Assess the quality of your teaching not by information students recall, but by the questions that they are able to raise. To pose a question represents great progress in comprehension. Questioning is the most sophisticated and civilized of arts.
  • Model inquiry! Let students observe your infectious excitement in scientific investigation and problem-solving. There is no better way for a teacher to model learning than by appreciating student questions and making time for them.
  • Make it your goal to be asked at least one question you can't answer each day. Never hesitate to recognize your ignorance. When it happens, revel in it. Promise to look it up, if you like, but revel in its just having been asked. To say "I don't know" is a moment of triumph, for it proves that students have engaged the lesson well enough to extend or transfer it "where no one has gone before." Allow students to brainstorm hypotheses about an unanswered question, if you like (and if it does not digress). Before you know it, they will share your excitement in exploring the "known unknown."

| Science Education | Syllabus |

| Top |

---

Our web pages are never finished, but always under construction! The formatting of our web pages may be unintelligible if you are not using Netscape 2.0+. If you find a link that does not work, please tell us which link does not work--and which page you are on. Contact us by Email with general inquiries or suggestions. Thank you.

• Science Education
• Basic Celestial Phenomena
• Constellations Index Page
• OBU Planetarium
• Cosmology and Cultures
• Unified Studies Natural Science
• Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics
• Mabee Learning Center
• Oklahoma Baptist University