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In this bulletin we:
When I ask students in class if they have any questions, all I get is
blank stares and silence. You'd think they all understand
everything I say! But I know they don't when I look at their work. I
can imagine that some students are too shy to ask questions in front of their
classmates. I thought it might be easier for them to come and ask me privately
about what they don't understand so I introduced office hours. No one comes!
What else can I do?
A. Teacher
Any
questions?
• Consider the kind of
classroom climate
that encourages
question asking.
• Suggest activities that
draw out students’
questions.
• Look at appropriate
ways to respond to
students’ questions.
Setting the Climate
Your relationship with your
students and the expectations you
communicate to them will have a
bearing on their willingness to ask
questions both in and out of class.
• Tell the students on the first day of
class that questions are welcome.
Organise a question-asking
activity to prove you mean it.
• Recognise that “Any questions?”
mostly gets no questions!
• Give students time to think, e.g.,
get them to read back through
their notes to see what they do
not understand.
• Prompt students if needed, e.g.,
“Today we have explored
Confucius’ views on personal
morality. Review your notes and
write down a question you would
like to ask him if he were here.”
• Tell students they are welcome to
approach you with questions out
of class and how to do so, e.g.,
office hours? email? PolyU’s LMS?
• Be genuine in your request for
questions and in how you
respond when they do ask.
Activities to Draw Out Students’
Questions
Have interesting individual and group strategies at your finger tips to make questionasking both productive and non-threatening. These three activities, for classes of any
size, allow students to ask questions without pressure and embarrassment.
Review Your Notes, Find a Question
Ask students during or at the end of a class to go back over their notes and see if
there is anything that is unclear. Ask them to jot down a question about anything
they don’t understand. Call for volunteers to ask their questions.
Ticket Out the Door
a variation of Review Your Notes
In the last 10 minutes of class, issue each student with a small
?
piece of paper. Ask them to read back through their notes and
write a question that, if answered, would help them either
understand what they are confused about or know more
about something that really interests them. Stand at the door
with a box in which the students place their “ticket out the door” as they leave. Start
the next class by addressing the most frequently asked or interesting questions.
Questions on the Run
At the start of the lesson, provide each student with a Post-it.
Ask them to use it to write down any question that comes
into their minds as you teach. Tell them where to post their
questions and that it will be helpful to you to post them
while you are teaching. From time to time, check the questions and respond to those
that will add meaning to the lesson. If you don’t have time to address all the
important ones, post answers onto the online discussion forum or use them to start
your next lesson.
H.E.L.P.! is produced by the Educational Development Centre (EDC) of The Hong Kong Polytechnic
University. Each bulletin focuses on understanding and addressing a teaching and learning problem that
a teacher has brought to EDC and which teachers commonly share.
©2008 The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
for Questions
Getting Questions: Activities and Responding
More Activities
Responding to Students’ Questions
Think laterally in terms of the activities you
use to get students to ask questions. There
are different activities that use in-class
groups as well as and out-of-class time to get
students to think about what they know and
what they still need to clarify or find out.
Once students are comfortable asking you questions, your next challenge
is to think through the different ways you might respond. Take a look at
these common situations below. The different responses may suggest to
you ways in which you can model learning skills, help students to
continue to hone their question-asking skills, and encourage them to think
for themselves. At the same time, students are not left without direction.
Thinking Groups ... for smaller classes
1. Hand out a large Post-it to each student
and ask them to write a question about
what they are currently studying.
2. Form groups of up to five members and
get them to decide which question they
think is most worthy of consideration.
3. Call for a group representative to (i) post
up the chosen question to a designated
space, (ii) survey questions from the
other groups, and (iii) choose one they
think their group would like to answer.
4. Group representatives take it in turns to
give a response to the question they
selected.
Give students feedback about both the
questions that they pose and their answers.
Students want to know they are on the
right track.
You’re the Examiner
... a take-home task
1. For homework, ask students to develop
a discussion question about the current
topic. Stress the importance of writing a
question that they may find difficult to
answer.
©2008 The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
2. Prepare them for the task by spending a
few minutes discussing question design
using the resources at:
http://cte.uwaterloo.ca/teaching_resources/
teaching_tips/Other/asking_questions.pdf.pdf
3. Encourage students to identify the
type/cognitive level of their question. Is
it testing knowledge, comprehension,
application, analysis, synthesis, or
evaluation?
4. Start the next class by asking some
students to present their questions and
explore with the class what the answer
might contain.
Students may be more motivated to work
on this task if they know that some of
their questions may be used in an
upcoming test or if they receive
participation marks for their work.
Situations
Appropriate Reponses
You don't know the
answer to a student's
question.
Interesting question but I
don't know the answer. I'll
come back to it next lecture.
I don't know the answer
to that. Does any one
else here have an answer
to this good question?
A student asks you a
question that is not
relevant to the
current topic.
Your question relates to last
week's topic. Look back over
your notes and read Chapter
2 of your textbook. If you're
still unclear, come and see me
in my office hours and I will
be happy to help.
Thanks for that question.
We'll be covering that in
Week 6. If you can't wait,
take a look at Chapter 8
of your textbook.
A student asks you a
question that you
think has an obvious
answer. You wonder
if other students are
also unclear.
Thanks for asking that. Ann
has asked the reasons why
the negotiator did not take a
more aggressive line in this
case. What do others think?
A student comes to
your office to ask you a
question about their
assignment brief which
you think is already very
clear.
Stupid question!
Let's take a look at
your brief. Exactly
which aspect don't you
understand?... What do
you think it might
mean?
“All Aboard?”
It is easy to lose the attention of a class when a student’s question is hard
to hear or unclear. It will help if you:
1. Clarify the question if it is necessary: “Do you mean...”
2. Repeat the question if the class is large so that everyone hears and feels
they are being spoken to: “What Peter has asked is...”
3. Place the question in a general context if it is not obvious: “This
question belongs in the section on...”
4. Decide whether it is best that you (i) answer the question directly or (ii)
involve the questioner and/or the whole class in getting to an answer.
5. Check back to see that the student who asked the question is satisfied:
“Does that answer your question, Peter?”
Contact Us
Educational Development Centre
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University,
Hung Hom, Kowloon
Phone: 2766 6292
Fax: 2334 1569
Email: etdept@inet.polyu.edu.hk
Read
online at:
http://edc.polyu.edu.hk/help
This issue of H.E.L.P.! was written by
Adele Graham and Sam Graham.
EDC ref 05