Asking Questions

Asking questions during lessons are critical for helping students to retain the information they are being taught and to stimulate critical thinking. The type of questions that I typical ask my students revolve around the higher order thinking questions. For the most part, I like to know what my students are thinking and I piggy back off of that. In addition, I try to make whatever we are learning become relevant to them. If the lesson is relevant to them, the students will have a keen interest in the lesson. The type of questions to avoid are questions that do not challenge students. For example, I never ask a student to tell me the date of birth of an author. The student does not have to think about a question like that; the student can simply find the in the text because date of birth is listed. Consequently, questions such as those do not require much effort. Every lesson that I begin starts with an essential question. The essential question helps the students to ponder and think about what they are learning. Once the essential question has been established, higher order thinking questions are asked during the lesson to stimulate discussion. As a result, I am not merely lecturing to the students but having a productive conversation with them. All in all, asking the right questions are critical to students understanding of a lesson. Most importantly, good questions challenges the students.