Questioning Strategies
Effective questioning sessions in classroom require advance preparation. While some instructors may be skilled in extemporaneous questioning, many find that such questions have phrasing problems, are not organized in a logical sequence, or do not require students to use the desired thinking skills. Below are some steps for planning questions.- Decide on your goal or purpose for asking questions. Your goal should
help you determine what levels of questions you will ask.
- Select the content for questioning. Choose material which you consider
important rather than trivial. Students will study and learn based
on the questions you ask. Do not mislead them by emphasizing less important
material.
- Phrase your questions carefully.
- When planning your questions try to anticipate possible student responses.
- Until you are quite skilled at classroom questioning you should write your main questions in advance. Arrange your list in some logical sequence (specific to general, lower level to higher level, a sequence related to content). Should you think of additional or better questions during the questioning process, you can be flexible and add those or substitute them for some of your planned questions. However, having a prepared list of questions will help to assure that you ask questions appropriate for your goals and representative of the important material.
Excerpted from Effective Classroom Questioning, Instructional Development, Center for Teaching Excellence, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006.
The links listed below will lead you to specific strategies and approaches to questioning in the context of college teaching:
"Answering and Asking Questions" by William E. Cashin, IDEA Center, Kansas State University