How can teachers     Help Students   Ask Open-Ended Questions?

     Ask students to pose questions after reading a title to access prior knowledge. Students should be encouraged to stop after a couple of paragraphs and to ask themselves more questions. Then, after reading students should be given the opportunity to sit and think about what they have read. Teachers should explain to students that all books raise questions in reader's minds.

     Research shows that student's who are taught to generate questions after reading outperform those who receive no training. (Pearson et al., 1992) Many questions are answered as they read. There are many levels of questioning as well and students have to be taught these as a strategy. However, when they get stuck on words or understanding main ideas they should use a Fix-up strategy to become unstuck.

The information below was gleaned and based on the following website.

For more information on types of questioning techniques go to: The MSPAP stances for reading: global understanding, developing interpretation, personal reflection, and critical analysis.

A Comparison of two questioning techniques

Factual Questions

  • Has only one story detail.

  • Can be answered with yes or no.

  • Has limited vocabulary, often not age appropriate.

  • Are general and not text based.

  • Do not require students to take a stand and often just state the facts directly from the story.

  • Are easily located in the text.

Open-Ended Questions

  • Has two or more story details.

  • Requires information and facts to be fully answered.

  • Uses age-appropriate vocabulary, which is extensive.

  • Focuses on the text and is reworded for interpretation.

  • Requires students to take a stand and be able to support opinions with story detail.

  • Are not so easily located and must use more than one paragraph to be located.

 
Students should:
  • Ask open-ended questions.
  • Form the question so that it could have more than one answer.
  • Have two or three pieces of evidence from the text to support their answers.

How should teachers approach Questioning in their classrooms?

 

Teacher Questioning

Teachers should allow enough time for students to think before answering and time to rethink their answers based on later discussion. Teachers can help students examine questions more thoroughly by asking follow-up questions, which require students to be more accurate and specific:
  • What evidence is there in the story of that?
  • How would the antagonist react to that?
  • What events caused the problem to get solved the way it did?

 

 Shared Questioning

Shared questioning is an approach that is based on  asking open-ended questions that allow students the opportunity to discuss at length concepts or ideas. The questions should lead to follow-up questions that help students construct or extend meaning.

  • Teachers lead the discussion and use guiding questions to allow students to become the leaders later on during independent group work.
  • For example: interpretive questions for The Three Little Pigs could include, "Why does the Wolf  always say, "Little Pig, Little Pig, let me come in? or  What effect does the answer of the three little pigs have on the wolf?

 

(Information based on An Introduction to Shared Inquiry- The Great Books Foundation, 1987.Third Edition)

MacGregor, Jean. “Collaborative Learning: Shared Inquiry as a Process of Reform. “ New Directions for Teaching and Learning 42 (Summer 1990): 19 33.