Questions can be a gateway into getting students to talk more. Sometimes all it takes is the right question to get a student to open up and answer or better yet, begin a discussion about the topic. I think as teachers we tend to use questions so often throughout our day that we may forget to change up our style and ask for additional types of responses.
There are three categories of thinking that are required to answer questions; analytical, literal and inferential (Pitler & Stone, 2012). Many teachers (myself included) tend to favor certain categories and only occasionally venture into others.
Upon reflecting on my use of questions I noticed that I tend to ask a lot of questions that call for literal or inferential thinking and not a tremendous amount of analytical thinking. I would like to focus on and improve my use of analytical questions. It was an interesting practice to review my work and make this discovery. Moving forward I can search out a wider variety of questions to use in my lesson plans to help students’ analytical thinking. This can also include ways to incorporate student’s asking or interviewing each other to aid understanding.
I often find myself answering student’s questions with questions of my own. I find it helps their thinking enormously if they’re not told directly to what they’re hoping to hear, instead have to do some further thinking about it, do some research or collaborate with teammates for further information.
Questions can be an incredibly effective way to help students round out their thinking and lead them to a next level of discovery as they journey to learn more about a topic. Questions can be used to stay focused and engaged with a topic, access prior knowledge, help students work together, find answers and access the material.
The topic of questions helped me consider my own teaching practice and evaluate slight changes I can make to improvements. By incorporating more tier 3 and tier 4 level of questions which require higher order thinking, reflection and involving students in the act of asking questions I will be strengthening my students’ learning (Dean, Hubbell, Pitler, & Stone, 2012). Using questions greatly helps students activate what student’s already know about a topic. Tapping into their prior knowledge ensures that they are making connections, building understanding and creating depth to their knowledge. In addition when directly taught as a skill, students can begin to ask themselves questions to aid in their understanding even outside the classroom.
Reference:
Pitler, H. & Stone, B., (2012). A handbook for classroom instruction that works (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD, Denver, CO: MCREL Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning.
Dean, C. B., Hubbell, E. R., Pitler, H., & Stone, B. (2012). Classroom instruction that works; research-based strategies for increasing student achievement (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD, Denver, CO: MCREL Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning.
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