Enhancing Student Engagement: Learning to Ask Good Questions

Why are “perfectly placed questions” so important in the classroom? They are important because asking the right questions ensures “an explosion of learning for students.” The folks at edweek.org shared what I think are some pretty simple but good tips for teaching students how to ask really good questions:

First, help students determine “what they really want to know or find out.”
Explore the difference between open and closed questions and how good questions “allow for real exploration.”
Before we ask students to write their own questions, ask students “to categorize questions [in order to gain] a better understanding of what different questions look like.”
[As students learn to create their own good questions,] we should model good questions for our students using “question starters.” Helping students “explore the kinds of answers they will get when asked different sorts of questions” is also essential to their learning.
It is also important to “ask students to deconstruct the questions they ask; this should help students [better] understand what it is they are communicating to the world.”

The ability to pose a good question is a skill set that students need to master as they become effective communicators. tlb