Helping Students Ask Good Questions

"The wise man doesn't give the right answers,

he asks the right questions"

Claude Levi-Srauss 

As a young student, as far back as the third grade, I can remember the butterflies and my barely controlled enthusiasm building up inside of me as the teacher prepared to ask for students to voice their opinion, to answer, or ask questions. My desire to participate was so strong that it took everything in my power to keep my hand from shooting up in the air while the silent voice in my head screamed, “Pick me, pick me.” I wanted to be part of the action, I wanted to show interest, I wanted to participate and as the excitement to do so would build, it would just as quickly dissolve. Why you may ask? I struggled to overcome my fear of asking the dreaded “stupid” question. Not only was I afraid of making a fool of myself, but even though my will to participate was strong, I realized that, more importantly, I had no idea what to say, what to ask, or how to contribute. More often than not I would let other students take the lead, and more often than not I would think, “I could have done that, I could have asked or answered that question.

As I got older I began to realize that it wasn’t that I was afraid to speak out, as much as it was not knowing what to ask and how to ask it.

As a teacher I don’t want to be standing in front of students who are feeling the way I felt, so willing to participate without the skills to do so. I think it is important for teachers to educate students on the styles of questions and help them practice the art of questioning, on their way to developing skills in critical thinking.

           

Here is an example where an English teacher has used the class to make up a questions board. Doing this not only allows the class to know that it is important to ask questions, but they are also able to come up with types of questions that they can ask.

In the April 2013 edition of Scholastic Education Teaching Tip of the month, Sue Jackson discusses how we can teach students to ask their own critical inquiry questions. First, we simplify the task by identifying the two types of wonders that a student can ask…

Different Kinds of Wonders
Heart Wonders	Research Wonders
- Questions you can answer with your heart and mind - ex. What makes a best friend a best friend?	- Questions that you can look up in books, magazines, on the computer, or by observing - ex. What goes on under an ant pile?

Specifically more with older students, it is important to spend time teaching them the different kinds of questions to show that different questions have different purposes and are not created equally (Jackson, 2013). The chart below would be a helpful way to outline the different kinds of questions and their purposes.

Kinds of Questions
Factual Retrieval	Personal Preference	Critical Inquiry
Fact Questions	Imagine Questions	Interpretive questions
- have only one correct answer - provide an understanding of the details of a topic - good for 'mini-inquiries'	- ask for some kind of opinion, belief or point of view- no wrong answers - good for leading discussions - rarely make for good inquiry-based projects because internally focused	- have more than one answer but must be supported with evidence - effective for starting class discussions and for stimulating oral and written tasks - good for inquiry-based learning

Teachers can easily provide opportunities for students to practice creating and responding to the various types of questions. While learning questioning techniques, this is also a way for teachers to direct students’ focus and efforts on important issues related to their community, current events and important issues taking place in the world around them.

At the end of Jackson’s article there is a helpful activity that is useful to any grade level and helps them refine questions for inquiry based learning. By definition, inquiry based learning is a classroom that encourages intellectual engagement and the ability to foster deep understanding through the development of hands-on, minds-on and ‘research based disposition’ towards teaching an learning (Jackson, 2013). In other words, teacher and students work collaboratively to tackle real-world questions and issues, while also developing their own questions, research and communication skills for everyday life.

In school we have always been taught how important it is to question everything but you’re never really taught how. Once students understand the types of questions and how to formulate the appropriate question, whether they are looking to challenge opinion or find facts, they can then begin to steer their own learning environment towards matters of the heart, the ‘true’ questions they have about things they really care about. The beautiful thing is, it is a positive cycle, because the more they understand and feel comfortable with questioning techniques, the more questions they will ask, and the more a student participates, the more invested they become in their own learning.

References

Jackson, S. (2013). Helping Students Develop the Ability to Ask Good Questions.

Retrieved from http://www.scholastic.ca/education/teaching_tip/april2013.html

Stephenson, N. Introduction to Inquiry Based Learning. Retrieved from

http://www.teachinquiry.com/index/Introduction.html