Learning How to Ask Questions

Knowing how to ask students the right question at the right time for the right reason is an important skill that preservice teachers can learn that will serve them for a lifetime of teaching. Classroom questions can be divided into three types, which are linked to each other:

• Information questions that deal with facts.
• Processing questions that help students analyze.
• Imaginative questions that encourage students to propose possibilities (What if … ?) or think outside the box.

Teachers or teaching teams first develop good questions to guide a lesson during the lesson planning process when they consider what students ought to learn.

The video clip focuses on how teachers can ask informational questions so that all students in a class have a similar starting point based on the same information—in this case, story problems. Initial information questions (e.g., Who? What? When? Where?) can help students recall and share facts and ideas from their reading or previous learning or experiences. Repeating or rephrasing questions and allowing sufficient wait time gives students space to think.

You can then use such shared information for discussion at the next level, through the processing questions that ask students to connect information, analyze the facts, or draw conclusions based on the connections they make. After students think more deeply about the material through processing questions, they are primed to make the content their own by applying it to new situations or creating something new with it. These are experiences that teachers can be encouraged with imaginative questions.

Source: From The How To Collection: Helping New Teachers, [DVD], 2006, Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

ASCD Express, Vol. 7, No. 10. Copyright 2012 by ASCD. All rights reserved. Visit www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.