Effective+Questioning

Think about a teacher you had in middle or high school that you feel was an effective teacher. What questioning strategies did this teacher use that really made you critically think about the subject matter? Be brief in your comments and include your name with your post.

Ms. Wild had great questions. She personalized them and made us think outside the box. She put it into context of the students and made the students put themselves in the main characters shoes. -Jacqueline Kim

One of my favorite teachers had a special way of asking thought-provoking questions with such passion and interest that we were curious to know the answers. She would wait longer than most teachers for someone to answer and she would keep giving hints until someone did. When someone answered she would say, "That's exactly right," or "That's brilliant." She never made anyone feel stupid when they answered incorrectly. Also, she often had us question what we read in the book or even what she said. She would ask us to disagree with her or explain what someone else - maybe the villain - in the novel's perspective would have been. She was always telling us not to aspect things as they are and she would congratulate us when we questioned things.

- Allyson Simonton

My AP history teacher in high school did a great job of questioning for critical thinking. Many times she would apply a historical situation to real life or future life, and would ask us to find a way out of the situation during current times or future times. This method forced us as students to use historical knowledge with current knowledge, and strategically plan a course of action. It was a lot of fun, but also made the most of minds both critically and creatively. ---Jeff Prickett

Mr. Farrar, my psychology teacher in high school. would ask the question in a way that students had to think twice about every time. These types of questions gave us as students the opportunity to bounce ideas off each other to come up with the answer. He would never make us feel less intelligent if we answered wrong but, would give you praise for thinking outside of the box. -- Ryan Rybicki

My 7th grade reading teacher would always ask us questions about our reading, before, during and after we've read the book. I thought this way of asking questions throughout an assignment, combined with the right critical thinking questions she asked, was a very effective strategy in questioning us. -Micah Booth

My 12th grade AP Psychology teacher had always asked us questions that applied to our daily living with the material that we have covered. This always had the class busy with exchanging thoughts and discussing about the material. --Sarah Yang--

My Band Director would always ask us open-ended questions. If one of the students or sections made a mistake while rehearsing or performing, he would ask that particular student or section what they think they did well and where they thought they needed to improve, rather than saying, "the clarinets missed their f-sharp!" -Xavier Diaz

Mrs. Falconi my 8th grade english and writing teacher used effective questioning. She rarely asked yes or no questions. Most of her questions were open ended, causing students to think critically about how to answer them. She posed questions for individual consideration, as well as for group discussion. When it was time to discuss a piece of literature, Mrs. Falconi also allowed the students to craft questions. I thought this was an especially effective technique. -- Dana Detterich

My Psych class teacher would often question us on the readings for the day or the HW by having us work on it in groups. It was nice because if one did not know the answer, there would be 3 others who may know. This was it didn't necessarily put a single student on the spot if they didn't know it or if they didn't read. As well as numerous times she would turn it into a Q&A game and would often get competitive. Harold Sloat

My 11th grade English teacher, Grandma Schall, always started and ended the class with questions. Whenever we would read a book or a short story she would have questions on the board and we would have to answer them as a group discussion and everyone had to answer at least one. I suppose she was preparing us for speaking in public. It was really effective because to this day I am not afraid to give a speech. At the end of class if we started a new book or short story she would ask questions of what this book might be. It was a lot of fun trying to figure out the story without even reading it. -- Kim Tiongco

My government teacher Mr. Nagano use to post something called a "thought bubble". At the beginning of every class the "thought bubble" featured a question on different ideologies, a controversial current event, or a video clip. We would write down our answers and then he would call us at random to answer the questions. We also had really interesting discussions on these topics. I remember one of the thought bubble questions was on the impeachment of Bill Clinton based on his scandle. The class got really heated on the topic but looking back I realized how we actually regurgtated the knowledge that we learned without even thinking. We also did a lot of debates in the class and he would choose really interesting topics that made the class excited to do the necessary research. He always gave us some sort of incentive for winning the debate as well such as extra credit or high stakes rewards such as a free homework pass. So it brought out the competitive edge in everyone. I thought he used a lot of effective questioning techniques to provoke critical thinking. -Phoithien Duong

I don't recall examples of the questioning my teachers used in high school, but I can remember the environment they maintained to produce critical thinking. Mrs. Thompson would rely on us to bring the information from reading to the classroom every morning, not her to regurgitate it back. So quickly you learned you need to read and participate in class or you will get absolutely nothing out of it and you will be sitting there, doing nothing, for an hour and a half (we had block scheduling). She lead with interesting questions and played the devil's advocate whenever she could. When I did this she would set up the classroom in a form of "debate" so we could hash out the details of an issue. It was always lively, loud, and participatory by nearly all the students. - Ryan Boughter

Many of my teachers would pose questions about what we were expected to have learned and retained in the readings. But I did have a couple of teachers that would ask critical thinking questions, especially in science and math. They would ask questions that would force us to take what we learned and now use that knowledge to answer something that extended beyond the lesson.---Kristina Goltz

When I think of thought provoking questions, I always think back to the TA that lead the discussion section for one of my philosophy classes in college. It was amazing to see the difference in how the teacher taught, and how she taught. Although she would go over the concepts that we needed to go over for the test, she would go beyond that to really get us thinking about moral issues and the grayness of the area between right and wrong. Questions like "If a train is bound to hit 2 people on its current track, and 1 if someone pulls the switch to change tracks, would you pull the switch?" At first these sorts of questions were seen as more of a riddle, but once the discussion started up, we realized these were really big and thought provoking questions. - Alejandro Torres

My music teacher, Mr. Witten, was one guy I really liked and came to respect. My friends and I took music because it got us out of PE (there was a rumor at the time that having PE instead of a sport, drama, music, etc. meant certain colleges would not even consider your application). Although I never really became too interested in music, I did learn to challenge myself. I was not a very good musician and I am pretty sure I am still tone deaf, but the way he taught the class, it made us want to at least try. The way he taught us to think about and look at music made something as cheesy sounding as marching band fascinating. Surprisingly, I ended up making the all-district honor band two years in a row. - Danny Chiang

I would have to add my high school AP Literature teacher here too. She made us think about literature and to question themes, symbols, and quality. She encouraged us to think critically, and to have preferences which we could support with evidence.- Lisa Gaetje

Mr. Dejean always provided great questions that we could apply or connect to our everyday life which I felt ultimately made them much more effective. ** Stephanie Zamora

I always enjoyed the writing prompts that my high school English Lit. teacher would come up with. Mrs. Cox would give us a creative prompt for an in class essay and she would then choose a couple to be read aloud. After the readings we would have a great Q & A group discussion with her as the facilitator. Looking back it was great in building critical thinking skills. (Christopher Duncan)

My 6th grade math teacher Mr. Luedtke had an excellent way of stimulating thinking in his students by using effective questioning. I would often have to stay after school because I was having difficulty understanding mathematics, and to this day I still have trouble with math. He would relate the question at hand to a life experience, such as the Great Depression, which he lived through as a little boy. One example was along the lines of "If a load of bread can be cut into six pieces, and one person can eat four pieces to be full, how many loaves would be needed to feed twelve people?" This type of questioning made my mind come out of a universe of numbers and symbols and starting thinking about applied mathematics. I credit him with first making math interesting for me out of all teachers I had prior, and most I had since. -Eric Ortega

I have to say it has been a long time since I was in high school and I really do not remember specific teaching strategies. I have been bloging about my high school teacher Mr. Davis; I wonder if he knoww how much his students liked and respected him? He did engage the class in discussion and treated the students with respect. I am observing an english class at a high school and the teacher asks questions after the class reads portions of a short story. The questions require analytical thinking and for the students to make inferences about the characters based on details given in the text. The students seem interested and come up with very good ideas. -Kelly Norris

I can't really think of a specific teacher who had effective questioning skills, but what I got most out of questioning happened when we were given ALL necessary information, then asked a question where we, the students, got to really analyze everything that was given to us and come up with our own answer or opinion. It was always better to think about stuff on your own, see how you feel about it, rather than have things just handed to you. -Kelly Benner

This may seem a bit odd, but my ceramics teacher was fantastic at getting us to think critically. There a lot of steps that go into making pottery and you have to plan out what you are doing early on. As we were working on our projects, he would walk around the classroom and talk to students. He asked them what they were doing and why and really gave us time explain ourselves. If he saw that we were making an error that would be a problem in the future he helped us come to that conclusion instead of just saying, "you're doing that wrong." Amy Hill

I was deathly afraid of letting anybody know I was alive in junior high school and parts of high school, so I think I have blocked out all memories of question-and-answer discussions in school. However, Mr. Kenady, my junior high social studies teacher, who I earlier described as "engrossed in his lectures" posed very thought-provoking rhetorical questions that brought the material to life. When I would walk out of the room into the sunlight, it was like landing back on earth - his lectures had taken us, mentally, to far-off regions of the world. - Melodee deLeon

The English teacher I mentioned earlier, Mr. Platt, had a knack for asking questions that really made his students think. Instead of presenting the material flatly, he encouraged us to look at things from multiple perspectives and to consider multiple answers to each question. With this philosophy in mind, a normally monotonous question about plot or theme came to life; students were encouraged to question the motivation behind authorial decisions and characterization, which added considerable dimension and intellectual thought to our analysis of literature. -Danielle Hughes