When teachers ask higher‐order questions and encourage explanations, they help their students develop important critical thinking skills. By modeling good questioning and encouraging students to ask questions of themselves, teachers can help students learn independently and improve their learning.
Higher‐order questions often start with question stems such as Why, What caused, How did it occur, What if, How does it compare, or What is the evidence. When teachers ask higher‐order questions and encourage explanations, they help their students develop important critical thinking skills. By modeling good questioning and encouraging students to ask questions of themselves, teachers can help students learn independently and improve their learning.
Effective questioning involves using questions in the classroom to open conversations, inspire deeper intellectual thought, and promote student-to-student interaction. Effective questions focus on eliciting the process, i.e. the ‘how’ and ‘why,’ in a student’s response, as opposed to answers which just detail ‘what.
In English, there are four types of questions: general or yes/no questions, special questions using wh-words, choice questions, and disjunctive or tag/tail questions. Each of these different types of questions is used commonly in English, and to give the correct answer to each you’ll need to be able to be prepared.
