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As practitioners, our questioning techniques have huge impact on the learning that takes place in our classrooms. Education Scotland states: "how questions are fielded by teachers sets the learning climate and enables learners’ thinking to be revised, affirmed and extended in a cost effective way which also supports positive relationships between teachers and learners.
Tom Sherrington - Developing a Questioning Repertoire
West Lothian Council Educational Pssychology Service created a document focussing on Effective Questioning. This identified some benefits of asking well-structured questions as being:
Directing students’ thinking in a particular way
Encouraging learners to think and actively construct their own schemas
Structuring or guiding the learning of a task
Allowing teachers to assess the learning of their students both in terms of what they bring to the lesson and what they are taking from the lesson
Identifying gaps and/or misconceptions in students’ learning
Providing immediate insight into where the learning of pupils has developed to
Helps students clarify their understanding of a topic
Motivating students’ interest and engagement in a topic
Providing opportunities for student learning through discussion
You can maximise responses by:
Asking open questions that begin with words like “What if...” “Explain,” “Analyse” “Create” and “compare and contrast” etc.
Increasing “wait me” after you pose a question, to allow students more me to process the queston in.
Asking students to elaborate on their answers and asking students “why?”.
Allow opportunities for students to pose questions amongst themselves.
Providing opportunities that challenge students’ original conceptual understandings.
Encouraging students to work through their decision making process, even if it brings frustration and makes them leave their comfort zone of learning.
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