Why is questioning good for students

Brooks and Brooks found that a rapid-fire questioning approach fails to provide teachers with accurate information about student understanding. Cohen et al. Complex questions promote complex thinking, argue researchers Degener and Berne But is it really that simple? There is a lack of consensus in the literature. Some researchers have found higher-cognitive questions superior to lower ones while others have not. Around 60 per cent of questions expect only factual information from students Lee and Kinzie, Samson et al.

Simply asking higher-cognitive questions does not necessarily produce higher-cognitive responses from students. On balance, low-level questioning aimed at recall and fundamental-level comprehension will plateau classroom learning quickly.

Higher-level questions can produce deeper learning and thinking, but a balance needs to be struck. Both have a place and a mixture of questions is recommended. Over the years, classification taxonomies have been developed to guide teacher questioning see Krathwohl ; Wilen and Morgan and Saxton as early examples.

In this six-level hierarchy, lower-order questions gauge comprehension; medium-level gauge knowledge application, and higher-order questioning elicits synthesis, analysis and evaluation. There are many questioning tactics to choose from to promote learning and provide excellent formative assessment information: 1.

No hands up. Anyone can answer, which avoids the same few students answering questions. In the hot seat. Ask the expert. The teacher puts questions to a student on a given topic, extending this to encourage other students to ask questions. Ask the classroom. The teacher displays a number of written questions to stimulate thinking about pictures or objects in the classroom. Allows time to share ideas with a partner and respond to a posed question.

A second challenge is to be able to get all most students to answer, incentives such as participation points, bonus points, or personal recognition of the student helps. One approach to getting students to think is to regularly ask three questions:. One can do this by using the last few minutes of the class to have students answer these three questions.

This can be done either using paper and pencil or using an in-class or post class polling activity. Just as important as getting student to answer questions is getting students to ask good questions. This is difficult, students are often shy and are not used to asking questions that go beyond surface knowledge. In the first few weeks of the course the questions were at best, trivial and often dreadful, the majority of questions were simply fact questions whose answers could be easily looked up.

One important question is whether having students write questions increases enhances their learning? The answer is yes, but simply asking students to generate questions will not necessarily lead to enhanced learning unless the following conditions are included:. Students need examples of what good questions and what poor questions look like,.

Do you think she might turn around and go home, stop at a house she sees to try to rest, or just keep going on with her walk?

You will note that by giving choices, you encourage children to consider alternate representations of the events, but these are prescribed by the choices provided in the structure of the question. Their distancing is greater than when they are told to "stay in the event" as presented. Ask a Closed Question: These questions generally elicit yes or no answers.

They can bring students to different temporal areas or elaborations of details, but the extent of this is structured by the question. For example: Do you think Goldilocks knew how the bears would feel about her action? Was it a good idea to lie down in one of the bears' beds? Were the bears frightened of Goldilocks?

Do you think the bears will ever leave their front door unlocked again when they leave the house? Ask an Open-Ended Question: These are the questions that open up the fullest range of distancing possibilities and open up students to the largest possibilities for accommodation of their thinking and elaboration of their existing understanding about what they are reading about or otherwise considering.

Group members can help the scribe in remembering and recording all the questions. Potential challenges that may arise with rule 4 include:. Subscribe to receive weekly updates of MindShift stories every Sunday. Search-Icon Created with Sketch. KQED is a proud member of.

Always free. Sign In. KQED Inform. Save Article Save Article. Katrina Schwartz. Oct 26, Failed to save article Please try again. On the teacher's part, the role becomes more a facilitator than an instructor. There are a number of potential stumbling blocks related to this rule, including: Students struggle trying to produce the questions: Give them time to think.

Repeat the QFocus and the rules but do not give examples of questions. Students ask for examples: Do not give examples. Repeat: Do not give examples.