Why are questions important?
Teachers ask as many as 300 to 400
questions a day.
Questions guide students’ thinking and
determines how students will process
materials presented to them.
Questions are the single, most influential
teaching activity.
 Why
ask questions?
 Focus
Student attention
 Help students interact with content
 Check for understanding
 Evaluate the effectiveness of the
lesson
 Increase the level of thinking
 Different
questions elicit different
thought processes.
 Four
types of questions
 Convergent
 Divergent
 Low-level
 High-level
 Convergent
 Have
one correct answer
 Convergent questions are needed to help
students sharpen their focus and attention
to detail and accuracy.
 What is 3+4?
 What are the days of the week?
 What are the planets in our solar system?
 What year did the US land on the moon?
 Divergent
 Open-ended,
more than one correct
answer
 Divergent questions help students to
delve into imagination and creativity while
at the same time, build their confidence.
 What are some examples of amphibians?
 What is your favorite book?
 What animals are mammals?
 Low-level
 Requires
only mental recall to be
answered
 Building blocks to higher-level thinking
 The student only has to remember
something that he/she already knows.
 What is the order of the planets in our
solar system?
 What are three simple machines?
 High-level
 The
student must do some kind of
processing of information in order to
answer the question.
 The processes include comparing,
describing, inferring, hypothesizing,
analyzing, and making judgments or
evaluations.
 Examples
 Compare
your community to the
communities of the colonists.
 What do you think will happen to this
paper clip when I drop it into the cup of
water? Will it sink or float?
 What do you think life was like for the
colonists?
 Bloom’s
 Most
Taxonomy
widely used classification system
for analyzing educational questions in
the cognitive domain.
 Teachers tend to ask primarily low-level
questions and the students lose the
opportunity to think critically.
 Bloom’s
Taxonomy
 Knowledge
 Comprehension
 Application
 Analysis
Synthesis
 Evaluation

Knowledge level
 Knowledge questions encourage students to
recall information in the form that they
learned it.
 Knowledge level verbs
 Defines
Matches
 Describes
Names
 Identifies
Recalls
 Labels
Recites
 Lists
Recognizes

 Comprehension
level
 Encourage students to communicate an
idea or phenomenon in a new or different
form
 Comprehension level verbs:
 Discriminates
generalizes
 Edits
gives examples
 Estimates
infers
 Explains
predicts
 Extends
summarizes
Application level
 Encourage students to apply ideas or skills to
new situations or to use the knowledge they
possess to solve a problem.
 Application level verbs:
 Construct
translate
 Demonstrates
relates
 Modifies
show
 Computes
Put to use
 Illustrate
Prove

Analysis level
 Requires students to break down something,
such as an idea, into its constituent parts or
to uncover the unique characteristics of a
“thing”.
 Analysis level verbs:
 Break Down
Differentiate
 Classify
Discriminate
 Categorize
Simplify
 Contrast
Criticize
 Debate
Outline

Synthesis level
 Encourage students to put the information
back together in imaginative and/or original
ways.
 Synthesis level verbs:
 Blend
Modify
 Construct
Integrate
 Create
Combine
 Design
Arrange
 Develop
Reorganize


Evaluation level
Require students to judge something by
determining a standard and comparing it to the
standard.
 Evaluation level verbs:
 Appraise
Evaluate
 Argue
Grade
 Assess
Judge
 Critique
Validate
 Defend
Justify

 Useful
 Wait
questioning techniques
time
 Phrasing questions
 Planning ahead
 Teacher response to questions
(redirection, prompting, probing,
praise)
 Wait
 After
time
asking a question, the teacher
waits 3-5 seconds before accepting
answers
 Give students time to think before
answering questions
 Results in dramatic changes in
student responses.
Results of Wait time:
 The length of student responses is increased
300 to 400%.
 Students increase their use of evidence, or of
logic based on evidence, to support their
statements.
 The failure to respond to questions decreases
 The necessity for disciplinary measures
decreases.
 The variety of students participating in
discussion increases.
 Students gain confidence in their ability to
construct responses to questions.


Phrasing questions
How questions are phrased impact the quality
of response and the quality of thinking
required.
 Don’t begin a question with a name. This
engages only 1 student, all the others are “off
the hook”.
 Avoid beginning each question the same way.
“Who can tell me….”

Distributing questions:
 Research indicates that many teachers:
 Call on high-achieving students more than low
achieving students
 Call on boys more than girls
 Call on white students more than minority
students
 Call on students in the front row more than the
back row
 Call on students on one side of the room
 Use unequal patterns of questioning, students
have unequal opportunities to process material
and transfer to long-term memory.

 Planning
 Be
questions
sure to write questions ahead of
time to ensure higher level thinking
questions are utilized
 Responding
 Once
to student answers
students have responded to a
question, the teacher decides
whether to praise, acknowledge,
redirect, probe, prompt, correct, or
ask a new question.

Praise
Use selectively
 Can limit further thinking when viewed as a
terminal response.
 Praise must be meaningful
 Stay away from global praise- good job
 Be specific- I like the way you used your
experience to justify your answer.
 Tell why it was a good job.


Redirection
Asking the same divergent (open-ended)
question to several students in a sequence of
uninterrupted by the teacher’s comments.
 Allows teachers to get contributions from
several students.
 Allows more people to participate in lessons.
 Allows class members to continue to process
the question.


Prompting
Leading the student to the correct answer by
a hint or a series of hints.
 Encourage the students to take risks and
make educated guesses.
 Teaches the students how to use various
thought processes to find answers to
questions and problems.
 Prompting is a difficult skill because teachers
cannot plan the hint questions ahead of
time, one has to think on one’s feet.


Probing
Probing is a means of getting students to
elaborate on their initial responses to
questions, particularly when the initial response
to a question has been minimal.
 Asking the student for further clarification,
explanation interpretation, etc.
 Provides opportunity for more in-depth
thinking.


Correct
Correct misinformation and prompt for correct
information.
 Do not repeat the wrong answer, only repeat
back the correct answer.
 Students can stop listening after the incorrect
answer is given. Make sure that the students
are paying attention when the correct answer is
given.


Effective practices related to questioning
Plan the questions that are to be asked during
a lesson
 Clarify the purpose of the questions
 Use a balanced combination of
low/high/convergent/divergent questions
