Questioning Techniques: Research-Based Strategies for Teachers — Energy and the Polar Environment

Questioning techniques are a heavily used, and thus widely researched, teaching strategy. Research indicates that asking questions is second only to lecturing. Teachers typically spend anywhere from 35 to 50 percent of their instructional time asking questions. But are these questions effective in raising student achievement? Teachers ask questions for a variety of purposes, including: To actively involve students in the lessonTo increase motivation or interestTo evaluate students’ preparationTo check on completion of workTo develop critical thinking skillsTo review previous lessonsTo nurture insightsTo assess achievement or mastery of goals and objectivesTo stimulate independent learning A teacher may vary his or her purpose in asking questions during a single lesson, or a single question may have more than one purpose. In general, research shows that instruction involving questioning is more effective than instruction without questioning. How many questions should a teacher ask?

How Dissecting a Pencil Can Ignite Curiosity and Wonderment | MindShift | KQED News Can the act of making or designing something help kids feel like they have agency over the objects and systems in their lives? That’s the main question a group of researchers at Project Zero, a research group out of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, are tackling alongside classroom-based teachers in Oakland, California. In an evolving process, researchers are testing out activities they’ve designed to help students to look more closely, explain more deeply and take on opportunities to change things they see around them. The program is called Agency By Design and it relies on nimble, malleable activities Project Zero researchers call “thinking routines” that slow down the pace of the classroom to make space for deep observation and wonderment. “The main focus we’re looking at is an idea about how students might gain an alertness to their designed world, the designed objects and systems in their world,” said Jessica Ross, a senior practitioner specialist at Project Zero.

How to Bring ‘More Beautiful’ Questions Back to School | MindShift | KQED News In the age of information, factual answers are easy to find. Want to know who signed the Declaration of Independence? Google it. Curious about the plot of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous novel, “The Scarlet Letter”? A quick Internet search will easily jog your memory. Curiosity is baked into the human experience. “Kids are lighting up their pleasure zones and getting dopamine hits every time they learn something that solves something they were curious about,” Berger said. Luckily, kids are hard-wired for that kind of generative curiosity. There are a lot of understandable reasons why questioning drops off in school. But knowledge can also be the enemy of questioning. And of course there are social barriers to questioning. These barriers to questioning are real and challenging, but there are lots of ways parents and teachers can work to make questioning a normal part of school and life. “You don’t have to have the answers. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Questioning Is About Power