 The power of asking good questions, creating a culture of critical thinking. Asking questions is a common occurrence in the classroom. Why do you ask questions? What questions do you ask? How do you respond to student answers? Take a minute to reflect upon your answers to these questions. The most common questions we ask are those that pose a problem and those that help kids understand what the teacher wants. Questions that clarify what the teacher just said or what the teacher wants students to do. These questions are more about rule following and giving the teacher what they want. Are you looking for the answer you expect or are you looking for insights into student thinking? How often do you ask questions that help you understand the kids? Do you ask questions that help kids move their thinking forward or do you try to move them to think like you? We often ask kids to set their own thinking aside and to think like the teacher. We can move kids forward by asking them how their idea would work in a different situation. We also need to ask questions to help kids generalize big ideas that can lead them to apply ideas to other contexts. Questioning is a strategy that teachers use to check for understanding and probe thinking. Teachers are getting better at asking open-ended questions now for multiple entry points and multiple strategies or answers. For example, the area of a rectangle is 36 meters squared. What might the dimensions be? What do we do if a student doesn't know how to start? How do we move them forward without telling them what to do? We need to plan ahead and think about the basic understandings necessary to engage in this problem. What kinds of probing questions do I have to ask to get kids thinking about these big ideas? For example, what do we mean by area? Can you draw me a rectangle and grid paper? How would you determine its area? What would cause the area to change? These questions help kids make their own connections between what they know and what the problem is asking of them. How we respond to a student sets a tone for the activity. When a student gives an answer, how do you respond? Do you respond by asking probing questions? Should you respond differently if the answer is right than if the answer is incorrect? Do you verify whether a response is right or wrong? We can stop the thinking very quickly by telling the student that they are right or wrong. Is there a way to respond that keeps the thinking going whether or not the answer is correct? If the answer is right, do I just go on and assume the right answer means understanding? But in doing this, we may never find out what the student understands and trusts. This is a missed assessment opportunity. Instead, we need to respond with questions such as how do you know your answer is right? Tell me more. Did anyone look at it a different way? Is there more than one possible answer? Why does that work? Does this always work? How would your answer change if the numbers changed? The goal is to keep the thinking going to deepen understanding and determine whether or not students really understand. If the answer to a question is wrong, we could speed up the activity by telling them to correct their error. That way, they can complete more problems. However, just as for those students who provided a correct response, we should ask questions that probe student thinking to help us identify what they do and don't understand. These same questions will help the student to identify their misunderstanding. Other students in the class may benefit by listening to this conversation as they may have similar misunderstandings. Today, errors really can be teaching moments. How do I find the time to do this? We must first see that it is not wasted time. Teachers are not the only ones who can validate answers and provide feedback. Once a teacher models good questioning strategies early in the year, they can invite students to validate each other's responses and provide good feedback. This allows the teacher the opportunity to listen interpretively to individual student responses in the conversation. The teacher is still a member of the community of learners and can engage in the conversation as the need arises. By including more students in the process, the teacher has more opportunities to assess more students' understanding. The information gathered will help the teacher design next steps for all learners. Another way to involve students in the process is to have them paraphrase other students' explanations. This is far more informative than asking who understands. It is only through self-reflection that we will really begin to change our practice. The questions provided here are intended to help you reflect upon the questioning strategies you currently use in your classroom. We wish you success in your never-ending journey towards helping all students become better learners.