The Art of Questioning

Did you ever wonder why we ask

questions? We ask questions if we want
to find out something that is not known
and even with the things we already
have knowledge of. Even small kids ask
questions out of curiosity, over the
many amazing things they see and
experience around them.
.
Questions provide answers to our curios
mind, things that need reasoning, things
we do not understand, and discovery of
something new.
Questions make us reflect on the way
we deal with life and promote a better
understanding of why things happen the
way it should be.
In the many aspect of life and in the
various fields, we ask different types of
questions. But as to what kind of
questions we ask, probably a lot of us
are not aware that we formulate our
questions and the way we ask them fall
into many different categories.
 What do we mean by
Questioning Techniques?
Socrates: Teaching is the art of asking
questions.
Guy Claxton: Good learning starts with
questions, not answers.
Albert Einstein: In the middle of
difficulty lies opportunity. The
important thing is not to stop
questioning.
 What do we mean by
Questioning Techniques?

Most often we ask, what is the art of

questioning? Is there such an art in
asking questions? Can’t we not just ask?
Is there a need for us to develop the
what you call as questioning techniques?
What we have in mind as teachers, is
that we question to know whether we
were able to teach the skills that
pertains to the topic/subject matter of
our lessons.
Methods used from constructing and
presenting questions in order to
promote effective discussions and
learning or to elicit information. The
reasons why we should be adept in
questioning techniques.
 Why is there a need to know
about Questioning Techniques?
 Interaction – the most common form of
interaction between teachers and
students.

 Challenge –provide motivation by

encouraging students to actively
participate in learning.
 Influence- can cause integration of
skills.

 Progress- asking questions help teacher

to promote the level of the students.

 Assessment –the teacher can assess the

effectiveness of her teaching.
Purpose of Knowing and Using
Questioning Techniques:
 To interest, engage and challenge pupils

 To check on prior knowledge and

connect it to a new topic

 To stimulate, recall and use existing

knowledge and experience in order to
create new understanding and meaning
 To focus thinking on key concepts and
issues

 To extend pupils’ thinking from the

concrete and factual to the analytical
and evaluative

 To lead pupils through a planned

sequence which progressively
establishes key understanding
 To promote reasoning, problem solving,
evaluation and the formulation of
hypotheses

 To promote pupil’s learning about the

way they have learned
 What’s the purpose of asking questions
in the following stages?
Stages Purpose

1. Warming – up-- ---- revising, recalling,

motivating

2. Presentation -------- eliciting

3. Practice ------- practicing the taught
material

4. Production---- checking comprehension

(wrap-up)
Types of Questions:
 Wh -Questions

 Asking information about something

 Asking for a reason
 Asking about time
 Asking about place
 Asking about choice
 Asking what or which person or people
 Asking for ownership
 Yes /No Questions
A closed question can be answered with either
a single word or a short phrase.
A closed question can be answered with yes or
no.
They should be used with care –too many
closed questions can caused frustration and
shut down conversation.
 Tag Questions:
It is a statement followed by a mini-
question. The whole sentence is a “tag
question,” and the mini-question at the
end is called a “question tag.”

Example: My mother is beautiful. Isn’t

she?
 Inference Questions:

This is to assess the ability to go

beyond what is in the page.
 When a student asks a
question:

Clarify it, if necessary, help the student

to answer the question himself, or ask
other students to answer. Answer it
yourself only as a last resort. But, never
let a student’s question go unanswered.
 What are the characteristics
of a good question?
A good question should be…..
 Short, thought provoking, properly
directed
 Unambiguous, relevant, related to the
objectives
 Clearly stated, straight forward,

comprehensive, common vocabulary.

Effective Questioning should….
1. Reinforce and promote the learning
objectives
2. Include “staging Questions” to draw
pupils towards key understanding or to
increase the level of challenge in a
lesson as it proceeds.
3. Involve all pupils
4. Engage pupils in thinking for
themselves.
5. Promote justification and reasoning.
6. Create an atmosphere of trust where
pupils’ opinions and ideas are valued.
7. Show connections between previous and
new learning.
8. Encourage pupils to speculate and
hypothesize.
9. Encourage pupils to ask as well as to
“receive” questions.

10. Encourage pupils to listen and respond

to each other as well as to the teacher.
Pitfalls of Questioning:
1. Asking many questions.
2. Asking questions answerable with a
simple yes or no answer.
3. Asking too many short-answer, recall
based questions.
4. Asking “bogus,” “What am I thinking”
questions.
5. Starting all questions with the same stem
6. Focusing on a small number of pupils and not
involving the whole class.
7. Making a sequence of questions too rigid
8. Not giving pupils time to reflect, or to pose
their own questions
9. Dealing ineffectively with incorrect
answer

10. Asking questions when another

strategy might be more better.
 How to Evaluate the kind of
questions you make:
Questions that can be answered wit
“yes” or “no” are seldom worth asking.
Bloom’s Taxonomy identifies knowledge,
understanding and application as lower
level skills, and analysis, synthesis, and
evaluation as higher- level thinking still
to which to aspire.
According to research, 80% of
questions teachers ask are low-order
questions that are literal-factually or
knowledge-based.
Questions that test knowledge or
comprehension are easy to assess, as
they are either right or wrong. The next
level is application, and it requires
students to use knowledge they have
gained to solve a problem.
Higher-order questions and answers,
involve analysis, synthesis, and
evaluation. Because they are abstract,
these questions and answers are
subjective and therefore, more difficult
to evaluate.
Educators often mention the importance
of higher-order thinking and the media
reports that children will need creative
critical thinking skills to succeed. Many
teachers concerned with higher-order
thinking use Bloom’s Taxonomy to mold
their lessons.
The Taxonomy consists of six levels;
remembering, understanding, applying,
analyzing, evaluating and creating. The
last three are considered higher-order
thinking skills.
 Examples for the HOT or
higher-order-thinking skills:
 Venn Diagram- (analyzing)--- prompt the
students to compare and contrast.
Teachers can use them across all
subject areas to promote analytical
thinking.
 Cooperative Decision –Making-
(evaluating)
 Mock – Trials- (analyzing –evaluating)
 Engineering Challenges- (creating)
Kinds of Questions
 Closed Questions- a closed question can
be answered with either a single word
or a short phrase. Thus: “How are you?”
and “Where do you live?” are closed. A
closed question can be answered with
either “Yes” or “No”.
Characteristics:
They give you facts.
They are easy to answer
They keep control of the
conversation with the questioner.
 Chunking Questions
Chunking down is getting more details by
probing for more information. The goal
is to find out more, fill in empty gaps in
your picture, test the reality of the
situation.

You ask: How did you do that?

Why did it happen?
 Non-Leading Questions
Avoid complex language-using big words
that readers could not understand.
Avoid Jargon- Jargon is helpful for
people who specialize in the same
subject as it allows them to talk in
“shorthand”. It is sometimes useful but
most of the time it annoys other people
who think you are trying to look good
and increase your status at their
expense.
 Double Bind Questions: which ever way
you answer the result is the same.
 Echo Questions: repeat what they say
as a question.
 Empowering Questions: that releases
limits on people.
 Funnel Questions: seeking more details
or more information.
 Group Questions: questions given to
many people at one time.
 Interrogative Questions: questions that
lead to answers.
 Leading Questions: that may or may not
be a good thing, you’re giving away the
answer.
 Open Questions: required long and
detailed answers.
 Probing Questions: digging for more
details.
 Prodding Questions: specific questions
for finding details.
 Socratic Questioning: Socrates method
of questioning to elicit learning.
 Tag questions: some questions
encourage agreement, don’t they.
At the end, we have learned that:

Good Questioning is a major determinant

of the success of teaching.
 Thank you so much
I enjoyed being with you!
Have a nice day!
God bless us all!

Ms. Ayette A. Munio