When a student asks a question in class, it can be an awesome moment. You get to find out what the student is thinking, and they get to find out the answer to something that they’re wondering about. But, getting students to ask questions can sometimes be like pulling teeth – “Are there any questions?” is often met by dead silence, and even tumbleweed rolling through the classroom, if you wait long enough.
I attended a fantastic talk last year by Maryellen Weimer, and her approach has stuck with me. She changes the frame of the prompt – rather than asking “Are there any questions?” she instead says “What questions do you have?” – which is a subtle but effective shift, and it changes the tone entirely.
Taking this to the next level, a great strategy I’ve seen here is Reinhard Jetter’s approach. Rather than asking if there are questions, or what questions the students might have, he states that there SHOULD BE questions, and is just waiting for the students to figure out what they are. I recently saw him say to the class, “Based on what we just talked about, there are three questions that you should be wondering about. What are those three things?” The class immediately buzzed – some students were trying to figure out the first one, while others were trying to ‘collect’ all three. Reinhard is almost game-ifying the discussion for the students. And when a student suggested one that he hadn’t thought of, he promptly said “Okay then, there are four things we should be asking. Great!” Really cool to see this discussion and facilitation.
What techniques do you use to get students to formulate and ask questions in your classes?