Strategies to Foster Student-Led Discussions and Questioning
We recently had a blog post titled, “How to Ask Better Questions and Foster Student Independence” based on the book, We Belong: 50 Strategies to Create Community and Revolutionize Classroom Management by Laurie Barron and Patti Kinney. If you have not checked it out yet, please do so before diving into this blog post. It is all about the teacher-centered approach to asking questions.
In this blog post we are going to discuss the student-centered approach to questioning and strategies we can teach our students to become the awesome questioners that they are.
Some questions the authors Laurie Barron and Patti Kinney pose to us as teachers are “Are your students asking questions? How often? Do you encourage them to question? Have you taught them how?” The whole point of discourse in a classroom is that students should be doing more of the talking and questioning than the teacher.
What happens when students ask questions?
When students are generating questions, you can assess their knowledge on the topic. Can they connect their new learning to their schema? They will need to make sense of the new information and how it relates to their schema in order to generate questions.
When students ask questions, they have to “articulate clearly what it is they hope to learn.” When students ask questions, it also prompts them to listen to their peers. This fosters community and autonomy.
When students listen to their peers, it provides opportunities for them to analyze new information and synthesize their learning based on the new ideas being presented.
When students are the ones asking the questions, their peers are getting a lesson in “self-expression and social interaction.” Their fellow peers are far better teachers when it comes to teaching how to ask and answer questions and how to give and receive feedback.
Strategies to foster student-led discussions and questioning:
One of the strategies that we utilize in our classrooms to get students talking, questioning, and learning is socratic seminars. Powerful learning happens when you turn the talking and questioning over to your students.
Another approach is to model proper questioning strategies, as well as what it looks like to listen. Students need a ton of practice to get good at any skill. The more time they have to practice their questioning skills, the better they will get at it. That means you have to offer them the time in class.
One great resource is this rubric provided by Jackie Walsh on the blog, Middle Web. Jackie Walsh poses the idea that the reason many students do not ask more questions in class is because they think their job is to answer questions, not ask them. Another misconception students have is that if they ask questions, they will be deemed “not smart” or they fear their peers will see them as “uncool” for caring about school.
The Bottom Line:
The only way our students are going to get good at asking questions is by practicing asking questions. We have some awesome units on questioning that you can find here and here.