Lesson 5.4: Using Questions

5. Using questioning to promote thinking

Of the questions posed, 60 percent recalled facts and 20 per cent were procedural (Hattie, 2012), with most answers being either right or wrong. But does simply asking questions that are either right or wrong promote learning?

• Guide students toward understanding when a new topic or material is introduced
• Push students to do a greater share of their thinking
• Remediate an error
• Stretch students
• Check for understanding.

Questioning is generally used to find out what students know, so it is important in assessing their progress. Questions can also be used to inspire, extend students’ thinking skills and develop inquiring minds. They can be divided into two broad categories:

• Lower-order questions, which involve the recall of facts and knowledge previously taught, often involving closed questions (a yes or no answer).
• Higher-order questions, which require more thinking. They may ask the students to put together information previously learnt to form an answer or to support an argument in a logical manner. Higher-order questions are often more open-ended.

Open-ended questions encourage students to think beyond textbook-based, literal answers, thus eliciting a range of responses. They also help the teacher to assess the students’ understanding of content.

---

Encouraging students to respond

• the length of students’ responses
• the number of students offering responses
• the frequency of students’ questions
• the number of responses from less capable students
• positive interactions between students.

---

Your response matters

• Pick out the parts of the answers that are correct and ask the student in a supportive way to think a bit more about their answer. This encourages more active participation and helps your students to learn from their mistakes. The following comment shows how you might respond to an incorrect answer in a supportive way: ‘You were right about evaporation forming clouds, but I think we need to explore a bit more about what you said about rain. Can anyone else offer some ideas?’
• Write on the blackboard all the answers that the students give, and then ask the students to think about them all. What answers do they think are right? What might have led to another answer being given? This gives you an opportunity to understand the way that your students are thinking and also gives your students an unthreatening way to correct any misconceptions that they may have.

Value all responses by listening carefully and asking the student to explain further. If you ask for further explanation for all answers, right or wrong, students will often correct any mistakes for themselves, you will develop a thinking classroom and you will really know what learning your students have done and how to proceed. If the wrong answers result in humiliation or punishment, then your students will stop trying for fear of further embarrassment or ridicule.

---

Improving the quality of responses

• a how or a why
• another way to answer
• a better word
• evidence to substantiate an answer
• integration of a related skill
• application of the same skill or logic in a new setting.

• Prompting requires appropriate hints to be given – ones that help students develop and improve their answers. You might first choose to say what is right in the answer and then offer information, further questions and other clues. (‘So what would happen if you added a weight to the end of your paper airplane?’)
• Probing is about trying to find out more, helping students to clarify what they are trying to say to improve a disorganized answer or one that is partly right. (‘So what more can you tell me about how this fits together?’)
• Refocusing is about building on correct answers to link students’ knowledge to the knowledge that they have previously learned. This broadens their understanding. (‘What you have said is correct, but how does it link with what we were looking at last week in our local environment topic?’)
• Sequencing questions means asking questions in an order designed to extend thinking. Questions should lead students to summarize, compare, explain or analyze. Prepare questions that stretch students, but do not challenge them so far that they lose the meaning of the questions. (‘Explain how you overcame your earlier problem. What difference did that make? What do you think you need to tackle next?’)
• Listening enables you to not just look for the answer you are expecting, but to alert you to unusual or innovative answers that you may not have expected. It also shows that you value the students’ thinking and therefore they are more likely to give thoughtful responses. Such answers could highlight misconceptions that need correcting, or they may show a new approach that you had not considered. (‘I hadn’t thought of that. Tell me more about why you think that way.’)

Remember, questioning is not about what the teacher knows, but about what the students know. It is important to remember that you should never answer your own questions! After all, if the students know you will give them the answers after a few seconds of silence, what is their incentive to answer?

www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=381755 (accessed 22 September 2014).