Questioning strategies

 What new questioning strategies have you learnt?

I have learned a range of questioning strategies which can really enhance learning as well as to keep the enthusiasm of the learners in the classroom. These are totally fun filled and challenging techniques that I can experiment with the students and I am quite sure that they learn and enjoy every minute. Let me start from the general ways of questioning that we have been using from ages:

Close ended and open ended questions

These two are quite common to all of us but are certainly powerful ways of analysing and evaluating the amount of knowledge that the learners have acquired. The former gives us a limited information of what the student could recollect, understood or probably guessed. This type of questions are just like the objective questions that needs specific answer which limits the learners thinking skills. But it help the teacher to get a quick feedback of whether the students have understood the topic or not and also it’s a good way of keeping the class focussed.

Whereas the latter is a broader approach, it gives enough space for the learners to think and present their point of view as well.  It provides room for the learners to analyse and evaluate from different angles and then come to a conclusion. This is a very effective tool to understand the student’s level of thinking and understanding. Furthermore it helps the teacher to understand the pace of her learners and evaluate the effectiveness of Teaching – Learning. In addition to this it doesn’t limit the learners to be in the nutshell whereas it helps them to break open and think in a wider prospective.

Let us have a look at other interesting ways of engaging the class in different ways of questioning:

1. General and Directed Questions

2. Wait time

3. Bounce questions around

4. Phone a friend

5. SCAMPER (Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to Other Purpose, Eliminate, Rearrange)

6. Preview Questions

7. Eavesdropping

8. 5Ws and 1H

In this list I would like to mention two types of questioning strategies which I found quite interesting. The Bounce question around, is a wonderful way of building up the students’ knowledge and understanding of the topic. This is an interesting method to keep the entire class engaged in the questioning as the question is framed from the answer given by the students and it keeps continuing. So it ensures the attention of every student because they are prepared to answer the next but it’s a challenge as they can never guess the question. Here the most important thing is that the teacher needs to be well prepared about the topic so she can give enough opportunity to each student. Furthermore it also helps to maintain the progression of learning in the classroom.

The next type of questioning which sounds amazing is Eaves dropping, here the entire class is divided into groups and given a topic to discuss and the teacher moves around from table to table listening to their discussion. Later she questions them based on their discussion. This is a good way of keeping the entire class involved as well as the teacher can have a track of how fruitful the discussions are.