How to question without making your student feel stupid

After reading an article by James Dryer from the University of Florida Extension I feel that I have a better idea of effective questioning techniques. James starts off by stating that teachers on average ask between 300-400 questions per day which are answer seeking instead of using questions as a way to evaluate students prior or past knowledge.

Dryer goes on to say that there are a variety of reasons to ask questions and there are as followed:

• Assess the level of student's comprehension
• Develop student interest or motivation
• Develop thinking skills
• Establish relationships between concepts

Inorder to properly ask questions one must know the levels of questions to be asked. There are two levels, lower and higher level. Lower level is asking at knowledge, comprehension and the simple application level of Blooms. Lower level questions are good to:

• evaluate students' preparation and comprehension
• diagnose students' strengths and weakness
• review and/or summarizing content

Higher level questions are good for:

• encouraging students to think more deeply or more critically 
• solve problems
• encourage discussions
• stimulate students to seek information on their own 

I believe that in-order to ask the right questions teachers need to ask both kinds of questions. If students get the right answer then I would ask them to explain. Its one thing to know the answer but it is another thing to understand what is actually being taught. 

Once the teacher understands the level of questions to ask they must then understand what the difference is between open and closed questions. Open-ended questions relate to ones that have several ways of answering. A closed-ended questions is one with only a limited number of acceptable answers exist.

after that is understood the next area is genreal and directed questions. A general questions is asking a quesiton to the group as a whole and a directed question is asking a questions to one student only. Genral questions are asked to check the level of understanding of the class and a direct questions is done to either better control the classroom, to get a student to pay attention more or to even get a student to think beyond the basics.

Direct questions can be used with the section I am going to go over now. Teachers always wonder how to maximize student participation. Well Dryer has a great section on this in his article. Some of the ideas that I like are listed below.

• call on specific students to answer questions. Phrase a question first, and then call on a student. If you call the students name first, the rest of the class may not listen to the question.
• Avoid looking down at notes after asking a question. you should be looking for volunteers and noting confusion or understanding of students. This will give you the opportunity to see what other students do not understand the information presented.

After all questions have been asked, teachers also need to know how to respond to the students questions. After listening to the answer that the student gives the teacher, there are different ways to respond. Teachers can do any of the following

• answer the question
• redirect the question to the rest of the class
• help the student answer his/her own question
• ask the student to see you after class
• defer the question to a more appropriate time
• refer the student to a resource where they may find the answer
• admit that you do not know the answer but tell them you will find out.  

Overall, having classroom management and being able to see if your students are understanding the concept being taught is the best way to see if you are doing your job. The most important thing is to ask questions and do it the right way.