If AI is teaching us anything, it is the importance of asking good questions.
While ChatGPT or even a simple Google search can provide answers within microseconds, the quality of those answers increasingly depends on what we ask.
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So the most powerful tool in your classroom isn’t what you know, or what your computer can tell you — but what you ask. And across both primary and secondary settings, teachers can demonstrate to students the power of asking effective questions to clarify, qualify, and interrogate.
Related School News article: Opinion: Teaching students to think is our best preparation for a post-AI world
Types of questions—and when to use them
- Closed vs. Open Questions
- Closed: has a single, short answer and is good for recall: “What is the capital of Canada?”
- Open: requires explanation or elaboration, as there are many answers, used for debate and discussion: “Why do you think capital cities are important?”
- Convergent vs. Divergent
- Convergent: focuses on a single correct answer: “Why does ice float on water?”
- Divergent: allows for multiple correct solutions: “Name an animal which lives in the desert.”
Use divergent questions to spark discussion, and convergent questions to check understanding.
Open questions can be used to deepen thinking, and closed questions to clarify.
The power of wait time
It’s common for adults – including teachers – to wait less than a second after asking a question. As early as the 1970s, researchers such as Mary Budd Rowe were investigating the power of simply pausing after asking a question.
She found that when teachers waited for three to five seconds:
- It encouraged students not to rush their response, they had time to process the question
- Students’ responses were more thoughtful
- Their reasoning improved
- More students were likely to participate.
Waiting after a student gives their response and before the teacher responds is also powerful.
- Students will often continue speaking and expand on their own ideas
- They are more likely to correct themselves if they made a mistake
- Other students are more likely to jump in and add their own ideas.
Letting students ask the questions
Another way to encourage students is to let them ask the questions.
Authors Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana wrote an entire book dedicated to encouraging students to form their own questions, Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions.
In this way, students begin to understand what they do and don’t yet know, and how they can direct their own learning. When students are responsible for making their own discoveries, they often take greater ownership of their learning.
“When students know how to ask their own questions, they take greater ownership of their learning, deepen comprehension, and make new connections and discoveries on their own,” wrote Rothstein and Santana in 2011.
Question your questions
A good way to deepen your thinking about questions is to ask each day, “Which question opened the doors for the best answers today?” This is a question both teachers and students can ask themselves.
Good questions matter because they encourage thinking and move the requirement from simple regurgitation or recall of information to active curiosity and inquiry.
