Asking Questions Effectively

Effective instruction requires a teacher to have proficient question forming and questioning skills. Skilled teachers skillfully ask questions that prompt student thought and learning. Their questions guide students through the learning process. You can also encourage healthy and productive discussions to promote learning. Asking the right questions can help students engage in higher-level thinking activities from Bloom’s taxonomy such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

Did you know?

When questions stimulate thinking rather than lead to the expected answers, children are more likely to understand on a deeper level (Chin & Brown, 2000; Jarolimek et al., 2005).

In addition to questions that assess knowledge and understanding, other lines of questions lead students to explore values, think creatively, and evaluate situations (Roe, Ross, & Smith, 2006).

Teachers need to carefully craft questions that require deeper understanding and critical thinking rather than ask questions that spur recall of memorized information (Fisher & Frey, 2007).

“Wisdom begins in wonder.”

— Socrates

Read on for three types of questions you can ask students that promote engaged learning.

Asking Open-Ended Questions

Consider these two questions:

“Does this room feel comfortable?” compared to “How does this room feel?”

When we begin a question with “Does this...” it allows for a very narrow response – generally a yes or no. Open-ended questions allow for a wide latitude of responses. Almost any question that can be answered with yes/no or that has a single, short, correct answer is closed-ended. To promote effective discussion, always use open-ended questions when formulating questions.

Asking Induction Questions

Induction involves looking at objects, people, stories, problems, or experiences, and identifying what is common to all. Think of induction questions as tools that help you connect the dots between the ideas, objects, people, or data items at which you are looking. Once we note the common elements, we can turn concrete information or experiences into abstract rules, concepts, and patterns.

Induction questions ask us to look at many instances in order to find a common element among them. For example, after a person encounters many instances of barking dogs, he or she can make the following generalizations:

• “Barking dogs that wag their tails are friendly.”
• “Barking dogs that have their hackles up are unfriendly.”

When we ask students to answer Induction questions, we want them to come up with a pattern, a rule, a quality, or what is commonly occurring among the various data they have been covering. A social studies teacher might ask, “We have studied the American Indians, the Indians of Mexico, and the Indians of Central America. What do these people have in common?” If the students cannot make this kind of generalization, then the teacher needs to go back and review each of the tribes, asking more perception questions.

To correctly answer induction questions, students need to have sufficient experience or enough examples with the data to see patterns, qualities, or common elements.

You know Induction has occurred when your students give an “Aha!” response that signifies the recognition of a pattern. “Aha!” responses can include:

• Eyes lighting up.
• An excited exclamation, such as “I get it!”
• A smile of understanding.
• A positive nod of the head.

Asking Same/Different Questions

Same/Different questions ask us to compare and contrast one subject of study with another. They encourage thinking in terms of comparisons. When new information is compared to what is already known, it is more easily learned because it is better understood. Same/Different questions are a type of analysis; they serve as catalysts for gaining a better understanding of a topic and lend greater clarity to the analysis.

When we ask students same/different questions, we are asking them to do a type of analysis — one of making comparisons. Students are able to understand more about one person, place, thing, or idea by comparing it to others. Therefore, same/different questions help students gain a greater understanding of whatever they are studying.

Below are some examples of same/different questions and directives. The subject of each question is given in parenthesis.

• Compare and contrast online learning to face-to-face learning. (Education)
• What are some of the similarities between the Battle of Vicksburg and the Battle of Stalingrad? (History)
• What are the similarities between a fly and a mosquito? What are the differences? (Science)
• In what ways was the movie different from the book? How was it the same? (Reading)
• Compare train, bus, and airplane costs from New York to Washington. (Math)
• Differentiate between the pronunciation of this word in English and in Spanish. (Foreign Language)
• How is this problem on the board similar to the one in your text? How is it different? (Math)
• Compare your own experiences in school to the experiences of the children in the story. (Reading)
• What is the same about the Pilgrims’ journey to the New World and you and your family moving to another town? What is different? (Social Studies)
• How is largo different from allegro? (Music)
• Explain how the two characters are alike and different. (Literature)
• Look at your two drawings and tell me how they are the same. How are they different? (Art)
• How are the two stories you just heard similar? How are they different? (Reading)
• Compare and contrast living in a city with living in the country. (Social Studies)
• How are these two groupings of blocks alike? How are they different? (Math)

The information below is based on ideas in the PLS courses:
Building Communication and Teamwork in the Classroom ^®
Classroom Management: Orchestrating a Community of Learners ^®
Classroom Management: Orchestrating a Community of Learners^® Online
Designing Motivation for All Learners ^®

Taking It Further

The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom
Asking Quality Questions

References

Chin, C., & Brown, D. E. (2000). Learning in science: A comparison of deep and surface approaches. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 37(2), 109–138.

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2007). Checking for understanding: Formative assessment techniques for your classroom. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Jarolimek, J., Foster, C. D., & Kellough, R. D. (2005). Teaching and learning in the elementary school (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Merrill/Prentice Hall.

Roe, B. D., Ross, E. P., & Smith, S. H. (2006). Student teaching and field experiences handbook (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall.