I really believe that a lot of teachers struggle with implementing questioning as they move through their lessons. Today I’m going to share with you a few pointers as to certain things you can incorporate in your lesson planning and also in your formative assessment strategies. You can plug in a few questioning strategies to help you as you move forward.
Have you ever asked your students a question and received no response? I’m pretty sure this has happened in every classroom at one time or another.
Why Use Questioning Strategies?
Questioning Evokes Thoughts
Questions evoke thoughts that deepen the understanding and increase the learning. So when you pose a question to your class, you are really helping them draw those connections and reflect on their learning and reflect on their experiences and draw that real-life connection to the content or the new knowledge or the pre-learned knowledge or the older knowledge.
Questioning Extends Thinking
Questioning strategies take the students out of the basic rigor. It moves them into the connection piece. It’s the moment where your students actually draw that engagement in the lesson.
Questioning Culture
Stimulus
We want to make sure to align our questions with objectives. We should make sure to avoid asking leading questions and instead ask direct, clear questions. Only ask one question at a time with a mix of questions, closed and open-ended questions.
Response
Give plenty of wait time without interruptions. Be sure to show interest in what your students have to say and develop your response appropriately making sure to watch your facial expressions and theirs, especially if their response to the question is a little out there. Identify strengths and weaknesses while listening to responses to see what needs to be retaught or thinking wow they know this stuff.
This is usually what makes us as teachers nervous. When we are creating that wait time and showing that we don’t interrupt our students when they are responding before we give them feedback. When we are showing interest in what they have to say, even if it isn’t the “right” answer or the right part of the content, or even if they aren’t on topic. This will help students to develop their responses.
100% Participation Techniques
Start from Day One… Or Hit the Reset Button
You can say, today, I’m going to start cultivating a culture of questioning in my classroom.
No Opt-Out
When you ask a question, students do not get to say, I don’t know. That is an opt-out. Or you know the facial expression as okay, don’t ask me, ask somebody else. There is no opting out. This is one of my favorite strategies that you can use with everything. You need to give a response, which means I should need to, this is where the strategies are going to come into play as we move forward.
Error is Okay
Not every question has a right answer and not every question is the right question for every student. It’s okay for students to make mistakes, that’s also part of building the culture. You want to ensure that you build a culture that your students feel very comfortable making mistakes because as they are going to learn, it’s from those mistakes, they’re going to grow and learn and get stronger.
Whiteboards
Some students are not very vocal. Having a whiteboard where everybody kind of has that privacy of writing down their responses sort of speaking it, that can be a very good start. If you don’t have whiteboards in your classroom, a simple teacher trick is to incorporate plastic plates or paper.
Thumbs Up/Cards Up
You can ask a question that requires a yes or no answer, or a true/false answer. Students can give a thumbs up for yes, thumbs down for no or a sideways thumb for I don’t know.
Pre-Planned Questioning
Helps Teachers
Assess the students with a quick and easy formative assessment to know if you need to reteach or expand the knowledge. Create engagement and provide opportunities for memory.
Helps Students
Gauge personal knowledge, grasp a better understanding and increase retention
Questioning Strategies
Jeopardy
You can use this strategy at the beginning of a new lesson, at the end of a unit for review, or in the middle just to check for understanding.
Take a Side
Have your students talk about the content, about the issues. You might pose a prompt and they are creating questions to ask the other group based on the topic.
First, read a statement that has two opposing views. Ask students to choose one side of the room to stand on. Students will say why they chose that side and they can change that as they discuss. You can do a yes/no side and have them have that discussion again.
Cold Call
Call the students at random. Everybody always has to be ready because remember, there’s no opt-out. So with cold call, you call them at random to answer questions in the classroom. Be sure to name the question before identifying students to answer it. Call on students regardless of whether they have hands raised. Scaffold the questions from simple to increasingly complex, probing for deeper explanations. Connect thinking threads by returning to previous comments and connecting them to current ones.
Hot Seat
The teacher places key questions on random seats throughout the room. When prompted, students check their seats and answer the questions. Students who don’t have a hot seat question are asked to agree or disagree with the response and explain their thinking.
Sentence Starters
Provide students with question stems to start conversations. It provides an opportunity for students to use key vocabulary. Provides a structure that may be higher than what they could produce on their own.
Family Feud
Show students an episode or clip of the show for instructions of how Family Feud works. Our classes represent the families we see. Students know they will get supported. This can be used in conjunction with popsicle sticks. Hands up means you have a personal question because you cannot raise your hand to answer a question. Come back to students who got the question wrong. Give students hints to show them support and that it’s okay to fail, but you still need to try.