TEACHING CHILDREN TO LEARN

QUESTIONING 
How questions can help develop thinking and learning.

Why do teachers ask questions?

   The common response is that teachers use questions in order to motivate, to test knowledge, and to promote reflection, analysis or enquiry. Questions are supposed to offer intellectual challenge, to encourage students to think. That is the theory. In practice many of the questions teachers use inhibit intellectual activity, and save students from the effort of having to think. Asking the right question has been called the essence of teaching in the sense that it can provide a bridge between teaching and learning.

Avoid this:
Unproductive questions
Stupid questions
Too complex questions
Too closed, narrow questions 

Higher and lower levels of thinking

Bloom’s taxonomy can be set out as follows.
 Higher order 
 Evaluation, e.g. ‘What do you think about ... criteria to assess or judge ... ?, 
 Synthesis, e.g. ‘How could we add to ... improve, design or solve ... ?’ 
 Analysis, e.g. ‘What is the evidence for ... 

Lower order 
Application, e.g. ‘What other examples are there ... ?’ 
Comprehension, e.g. ‘What do we mean by ... ? Explain...’ 
Knowledge, e.g. ‘Who ... What ... Where ... When ... How ... ?’

Good questions
Examples of open-ended questions, that genuinely invite children to think, include the following.
 • What do you think?
 • How do you know? 
• Why do you think that?
 • Do you have a reason? How can you be sure?
 • Is this always so?
 • Is there another way/reason/idea? 
• What if ... ? What if not ... ?
 • Where is there another example of this? 
• What do you think happens next?

Thinking time
  
  Also, in questioning, we should learn to value silence. Research has shown that some teachers, on average, wait only one second for an answer. If an answer is not forthcoming within a second, teachers tend to interject by repeating or rephrasing the question, asking another question, or another child.

  Questioning lies at the heart of teaching and learning. There is some evidence that teachers ask too many closed and unproductive questions. We should aim to ask fewer but better questions, and seek from our students better answers, giving them time to think and to respond. Teachers help children learn by being discriminating in their use of questions, and by encouraging students to ask their own questions. All children should have opportunities to generate questions and their ability to do so will improve with practice. We should aim to create enquiring classrooms – where children’s questions are valued, and where genuine learning and understanding are promoted.