Effective Questioning - Trevor Bond

 

Effective questioning from EDtalks on Vimeo

Effective questioning -  27/09/2012

Trevor Bond, a consultant working within New Zealand schools, discusses one of his passions 'questioning'. He sees questioning as being central to thinking and learning. Trevor believes that we must go beyond just talking to our students about 'open' and 'closed' questions. He states that a good question is the one that gives you the answer.


Main points

• Thinking is a process of questioning
• Not teacher questioning, but learner questioning

Two types of thinking:

• Sub-conscious - when we are not aware
• Conscious - deliberately set out to make a decision, think about something so we can come to an end point

The whole thinking process, is asking and answering questions in our heads.

For example: Analysis - asking questions that compare and contrast. Decisions - asking ourselves questions, and finding answers.

• All revolves about asking and answering questions.
• Questions - prime intellectual tool - what aren’t we teaching kids to question better? - Neil Postman
• Questioning central to thinking

Thinking = Questioning


Internal and external questions:

• Internal - un-asked, cognitive, un-expressed
• External - expressed questions, to bring information, to fill in gaps, inform thinking.

Open and closed questions are not enough - we need to look at core skills that we use as questioners.

As adults we use them subconsciously - need to teach the kids the strategies and skills we use to ask and answer questions. Thinking/questioning process.

Facilitate and teach kids to become effective questioners.

So what is it that we do as effective questioners?

1.  We identify the need - how can you ask a relevant question when you don’t know what the need is?
2.  We identify the contextual vocabulary - how can you express the question if you don’t have the vocabulary? How can you understand the context if you don’t have vocabulary ?

Teach children, within a context or problem to:

• Identify the need
• Identify what they know,what they don’t know
• Along with contextual vocab to ask questions = effective questioner.

Frame a range of question types - fallacy “open are better than closed”. Nothing wrong with closed questions. A good question is the one that gets you the answer you need.


Stay away from who, what, when, where, why, which, how? Don’t leave kids out from asking good questions.


Teach children, within a context or problem to:

• Change and modify questions, until they find the way to answer their questions
• Embed keywords and questions
• Be persist until they find the answers

Create situations where the children need to ask questions to help them to solve the end point - then facilitate and support them.


If we really work on our children’s questioning ability, we are working at the foundation of thinking skills, foundation of reading comprehension skills, foundation at learning skills.


Go and help your kids to be effective questioners!

- Trevor Bond 2012