The Young Teacher’s Guide to Questioning
The ability to ask the right question at the right time and the ability to answer your students’ questions well are two of the cornerstones of becoming an excellent teacher. This article will give you a great start towards becoming an excellent questioner.
Each subject discipline will have a style of question that fits into its own peculiarities. What is considered a good question might well vary from subject to subject as well as from year level to year level. Your professional education in your subject discipline would no doubt have addressed that issue.
So I have concentrated below on the many organizational processes that will aid your questioning techniques. If you adopt these, then your main concern with be with the wording of your questions and how you answer those questions.
Remember to become a good questioner, you must ask many questions, and learn from your mistakes you make with them. Never be afraid to reword the question and ask it again there and then.
1. Always spread your questions around the class to keep everyone alert, on task and expecting a question. Make sure it is a random selection, males and females, able and not so able.
2. Only ask questions of students who can offer an answer. (unless you are asking a student who is not on task as a disciplinary action.) You might decide first who you are going to ask and then ask the question to fit the student’s level of understanding. This will encourage that student who needs to develop confidence or will challenge the more able to extend their thinking.
3. Never ask “yes/no “questions. This will stop guessing and discourages the student from saying ‘the first thing that comes into their mouth’. Yes/no questions do not encourage thinking. Our questions need to encourage the student to think. If you do ask a yes/no question, insist that the student explain why he/she chose ‘yes or no’ for their answer.
4. Never repeat a question unless you have made a mistake or you have worded it badly or there has been an interruption. This helps develop listening skills and helps the students to become powerful listeners.
5. Develop a speech pattern that indicates to students that a question is coming. Using pause will help signal a question is coming. Slow deliberate speech, a change in volume and more formal language are characteristics you need to add to your questioning technique.
6. Learn to ask the same question in different ways to check for understanding or to enhance learning at a higher level. This will help you give more depth to your questions and help you to develop into an accomplished questioner.
7. When answers are not forthcoming, rephrase the question to lead the students towards the answer. You may need to ask a question or two that elicit earlier information from the unit of work you are studying as lead in questions before you ask your original question again.
8. Where partial answers are given, ask further questions to elicit the answer you require. I. often say, when the answer is incomplete, “more information, please” or “you are on the right track. Can you add anymore?”
9. Always give the student time to answer the question. Even give hints to the struggling student. You could ask a simpler question as a lead in to prepare the class for the more difficult one.
10. Make sure everyone is listening to you before you ask the question. Some primary teachers use the ploy. They say “1, 2, 3, Eyes on me” and the students reply “4, 5, 6 eyes on you.” It is also important that the students can see you when you are about to ask the question.
11. If one or more students know the answer, but the rest are struggling, have one of those students explain the answer to the class after a reasonable time.
Alternatively, give clues to lead the class towards the answer. Make sure the first clue does not give away the answer immediately. It is better to give lots of little clues that enhance their learning rather than one that gives up the answer without any real effort by the students.
12. The golden commandment of questioning is: Avoid ‘teacher lust’.
i.e. (a) don’t give the answer too quickly, when students take more time to think about the answer than you would like.
(b) Don’t give perfect answers every time as some students feel that they can never be as good so why should they try.
Rick Boyce has taught for over forty-five years. The last fifteen years before retirement he was the Head of Mathematics in a large Australian school. There he gained a reputation as an innovator in the teaching of Mathematics and as a presenter of professional development for teachers. During his career, he supervised the teaching practice of many teachers in training.
