More on questions

Hello everyone,

This is a reprint of a previous email:

Some more on the art of using questions in the classroom.

A frequent mistake that teachers make is to be impatient for the answer to a question in class. Silence can seem terribly uncomfortable when one is in front of a room of restless adolescents. Still, it is essential that you PAUSE after you ask a question. Don’t panic if your pause takes 10 or 15 seconds. Most of you rarely wait longer than three seconds after you ask a question, and you can easily quintuple that wait time.

If, after 15 seconds of terrible silence, no student seems inclined to answer the question, then ask someone by name and WAIT for them to answer.

Many students will simply shrug their shoulders and say (or mumble), “I dunno.” Don’t accept this for an answer. If necessary, break your first question into smaller questions that the student can successfully answer, but do not accept “I dunno” for an answer. A wrong answer gives you something to assess; “I dunno” can mean anything from “I really don’t know,” through “My mother was in the hospital last night and I’m not listening to you,” to “I knew the answer to this question in the third grade, and I don’t want to look stupid answering it in the eleventh.”

Here’s an example (not from real life; I’m choosing it because it’s an easy example, not because I mean to suggest that I have observed it)

TEACHER: What are some of the long-term effects of the Great Depression?
Pause.
Pause.
Pause.Pause.
Pause.
(After about 15 seconds of silence) Juan?
JUAN: (mumbles) I dunno.
TEACHER: What happened during the Great Depression, Juan?
JUAN: I dunno. People were out of work?
TEACHER: Good. What long-term effect did that have?JUAN: I dunno.
TEACHER: What happens when people are out of work?
JUAN: I dunno. They don’t have money?
TEACHER: Right. And if they don’t have money, how does that affect their children?
JUAN: They can’t buy stuff.
TEACHER: Right. [Teacher may comment briefly on what long-term effects may come when families can’t buy things for their children.] What’s another long-term effect, class?
Pause.
Pause. (Etc. )

These last pauses will probably not last as long as the first; once the class sees that Juan had some success with your help, and that you were willing to accept his answers, and once they see what you meant by the question, they may actually be willing to shout out answers rapidly. Honor each answer with a “right” or “almost right” or “good thinking, but no” or similar comment that fits your personality and encourages them.

Two things to remember: DON’T GET IMPATIENT AND ANSWER THE QUESTION YOURSELF, and DON’T ACCEPT “I DON’T KNOW” FOR AN ANSWER.

Jeff Combe