4. The purposes of teacher´s classroom questions.

Questioning . . . led to richer discourse, in which the teachers evoked a wealth of information from which to judge the current level of understanding of their students. More importantly, they had evidence on which to plan the next steps in learning so the challenge and pace of lessons could be directed by formative assessment evidence rather than simply following a prescribed agenda.

 Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall and Wiliam (2003)

        Questioning serves many purposes such as helping teachers to assess students´ knowledge and making students be active learners. Questioning is a means of developing and extending student dialogue and it is an essential tool for both teaching and learning.

        Teachers ask questions for many reasons, ranging from less demanding comprehension and recall questions to synthesis and evaluation questions making greater cognitive demands of the student. We, teachers, need to be actively asking questions to our students so that we realize how much they know about the topic we are teaching, but most importantly students must be actively participating in the classroom. Furthermore, by answering questions, students have the opportunity to openly express their ideas and thoughts; moreover, by asking questions to our students, we get to know their strengths and weaknesses. Based on this, we can look for the best ways to help our students get over their weaknesses, and help them increase their knowledge.

 

        Questions need to be prepared in advance of a lesson in order to ensure that lesson objectives can be met. The lesson objectives therefore need to go beyond a content based delivery and focus on the skills and concepts that students are aiming to develop. When objectives are clearly defined effective use of questioning can be made to secure student understanding in this area. Planning is essential, as is the strategic use of questioning with students and finally the following consolidation of learning which follows in subsequent lessons. A range of question stems to support different phases of learning are suggested below and can be applied to most subject areas.

Knowledge and Comprehension.

Who . . .? Which . . .? When . . .? What . . .?

Application and Analysis.

Why . . .? How else . . .? What effect . . .?

Synthesis and Evaluation.

How far . . .? What if . . .? How similar . . .?