Questioning Techniques in the Classroom...Are We Asking Enough?

As a teacher of 20 years and a mom of a 17 year old son who shares his innermost thoughts like a bear shares honey, I've learned to become better at asking the right questions to solicit answers which require more than monosyllabic grunts, shoulder shrugs, nods, or other nonverbal gestures. The art of asking questions to generate a response which requires thought or logical process requires at least two things: the question should be open-ended and should allow for more than one possible solution. First, an open-ended question is going to eliminate the yes/no response, or the selection/choice response, or identification responses such as "who" or "what". Second, when a question has more than one possible solution, more than one student has an opportunity to participate in the discussion. This keeps the kids in the back of the classroom on their toes, and the kids on the front wondering why they aren't the only ones with opinions. Ha!

Too often, when questions are asked, students are relieved when 3-4 eager beavers keep the teacher happily rolling along by quickly providing responses to close-ended questions without having to insert any effort toward thought or action. Those are the students who need to be challenged to think, and because I taught 8th grade for 17 years, I learned this group was unique in their need to be impressed. So, instead of asking a question like "What is the circumference of a circle?", I would ask "You and a partner have 5 minutes to find any objects in this room to demonstrate how to measure the circumference of a circle. How would you do it?" At the beginning of the year, the students would just look at me and each other like they didn't know if it was actually OK to get out of their desks, but eventually learned I encouraged constructive movement as long as they were working toward a goal and producing a product.

Now that I'm in an elementary setting as a media specialist, I've learned even more about the art of questioning with younger students using techniques such as wait time, whole group response, thumbs up/thumbs down, response cards, and equity sticks. I try to incorporate as many of the same styles as the teachers in the classrooms so when the students come to me for lessons, there is consistency. Therefore, in addition to the open-ended and multiple solution aspects of asking questions, I've learned to use tools to prompt responses from as many students as possible to keep all students engaged and provided with opportunities to demonstrate understanding.

Our school recently was chosen for a site visit during our district Advanc-ED accreditation. Several months of planning went into the process of getting ready for the team's visit, and during our exit interview with the review team, one of areas in which our school received high marks on the ELEOT tool was in the area of Progress Monitoring and Feedback Environment. What did that mean? We were asking the right questions, probing deeply, and providing chances for students to go further with explanations to show understanding. Equally worthy of note was the participation level of the students and a decrease in the amount of distractions and disruptive behaviors.

I found each of the following articles of interest. The first is a list of ten questioning techniques which can be used in the classroom. The second is an article describing the benefits of good questioning for positive classroom management.