questioning

Polling Students as an Alternative to Questioning

Teachers often go into classes hoping that their questions will lead to vigorous and thoughtful discussion, but they usually leave disappointed that they only elicited a sea of blank faces.

While it can be tempting to blame the lack of response on student lethargy or lack

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Finding the Discussion Question That Works

I’ve been teaching literature for more than 30 years, and nothing has struck me more during that time than the difficulty of finding just the right discussion question. It’s easy to give out information, which students dutifully take down in notebooks and throw away after

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pile of question marks

Questions to Ask When Students Won’t Participate

Participation continues to be one of the most common methods faculty use to get students involved in their learning. It’s a go-to strategy for many, but various studies have shown that it’s not always used in ways that realize its full potential. We go to

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Better Questions are the Answer

Good answers depend on good questions. That’s why we work so hard on the content of our questions and why we should work with students on how they ask their questions. What also helps to make questions good is asking the right type of

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Questions about All Those Questions Teachers Ask

For some time now my good friend and colleague Larry Spence and I have been discussing the role of questions in the college classroom. The conversation started with concerns over the quantity and quality of questions students ask—those earnest questions about what’s going to

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