I begin my next series of posts reviewing the book "Questioning for Classroom Discussion" by Walsh and Sattes.

Teachers who learn to ask quality questions, and teach their students to do the same, can transform typical classroom interactions. Cognitive demand increases as students are expected to formulate their own questions, rather than wait for the teacher’s. As they speak and listen to peers they should be formulating questions too. The practice of quality questioning empowers students to engage in challenging forms of open conversation, promotes respect for different points of view and helps to develop new understandings.

J.T. Dillion’s Questioning and Teaching: A Manual of Practice (1988) distinguishes between questions that promote recitation and those that foster discussion. He argues most teachers only do the former. Recitation is the focused on student mastery of core knowledge and fundamental skills, whereas discussion is the arena in which students think critically or creatively about that knowledge. Both types of questions are equally important, but teachers must recognize the differences so they can use them both effectively. If a teacher is giving a formative assessment/ checking for understanding, then questions of recitation are the best choice. This will help the teacher and student understand what the students understand. Questions for discussion help to build or deepen understanding, often occurring after students have mastered core content.

Here are some of the differences in purpose of questions of recitation vs. discussion

Here are examples of questions used in recitation vs. discussion

One of our goals here is to see how quality questioning is a key aspect in lesson planning. This book focuses on ways teachers can use questions to engage students in a deeper and more meaningful way.

The following four practices are associated with quality questioning:

Framing focus questions that initiate and sustain student thinking and interactions.
Promoting the equitable participation of everyone in the discussion.
Scaffolding student responses to sustain and deepen thinking and understanding.
Create a culture that supports thoughtful and respectful discussion.

Questioning Practice # 1: Frame a Quality Focus Questions

Step One - Identify an issue - choose something that is relevant and provocative to engage students emotionally.

Step Two - Craft the question - use age appropriate academic vocabulary, use strong verbs that will get students thinking, use a simple and straightforward sentence structure, and deliver within a meaningful context.

Step Three - Anticipate student responses - Ask yourself, “how high my students respond to this question?” Brainstorm all the possible responses you can anticipate. This accomplishes two things: it is a good check to see if the question can produce a range of perspectives. If it cannot, then it will not lead to a quality discussion. Secondly, it allows the teacher to plan effective moves, either to sustain the student thinking, or in the case of erroneous reasoning, to lead students to rethink their positions. Walsh argues that the main goal “is to develop students’ skills in challenging, extending and even correcting one another.”

Questioning Practice #2: Promote Equitable Participation

This is perhaps the most important and the most difficult aspect of quality discussions. Teachers need to strategize how do accomplish this. The challenge is how teachers can preventer the eager and enthusiastic student from monopolizing the stage without shutting them down and on the other side, how to encourage shy students without embarrassing them? How do you do either of these without interfering with the discussion?

There are no simple answers to this, but Walsh recommends two strategies:

Establish norms and guidelines that foster equitable participation
Use structures that scaffold participation by all.

Teachers must communicate that each student should be prepared to communicate and that students “own” the norms that are created by the teacher. One great step in doing this is to have the students develop the guidelines.

Walsh promotes one norm that is counterintuitive to how most classrooms function - NO Hand raising. Requiring students to raise their hands before speaking leads to a large number of students opting out of the conversation. Teachers should decide who will respond to questions by using random methods for selecting respondents, while engaging everyone.

Here are some good structures for scaffolding equitable participation:

Student trackers - assign a few students to keep track of who has and has not spoken.
Fishbowl - Use a fishbowl protocol where 5-7 seven students sit in an inner circle, while other students sit in a concentric outer circle. Each student in the fishbowl is expected to contribute to the discussion. The students in the outer circle must listen and take notes. They can also be asked to track which students have contributed. It is also good practice to let them have a chance to share one thought after the fishbowl participants have concluded their discussion.
Short-answer round-robin - Ask each student to respond to a question in one or two words. Each student offers a response and has the option of agreeing with a classmate.
Limitations on participation - provide students with a limited number of tokens to “spend” during a discussion. Walsh doesn’t love this as it interferes with the natural flow of the discussion, but he recommends using this in the beginning phase as you develop the class norms.

It is important for teachers to explain to the students their rationale for the structure they put into place. Engage students in reflecting on their own and their peers’ participation. Ask students why it is valuable to hear from their classmates. Expect everyone to take responsibility for supporting one another’s engagement.

In the next post, we will continue with best practice three and four, Scaffolding student responses to sustain and deepen thinking and understanding, and Create a culture that supports thoughtful and respectful discussion.

Links to Interesting Articles: