The Art and Science of Asking Questions
--> --> As teachers we ask a lot of questions. In fact, we do so frequently without thinking about those questions. We believe it might be a good way to check our class’s understanding of what has been covered, or a way of getting them involved in an otherwise uninvolved lesson. However, as it has been generally documented (Rothstein & Santana, 2012), teachers generally don’t ask the right type of questions, relying heavily on low-level recall over more complex questions of synthesis and evaluation, questions that take a considerable amount of energy and time to answer. We also tend to ask questions that require students to “guess what is in my head.” We want them to evaluate something and to ultimately come to the same conclusion that we have come to. But the very nature of deep and meaningful questions means that we should not really know the answer to the question before we ask it. That seems like an odd concept...