Classroom interaction and questioning

Ross Woods, Rev. 2018, '19, '22

In a class, most activities will be done in groups so you will need to monitor and manage group dynamics. Your purpose is to:

• make sure that each student can effectively participate and
• maintain good relationships between all class members.

This will be easier if you have done good planning of your use of time, classroom space, and discussion questions.

When you plan your group activities, proactively determine the seating arrangements and how people will participate in groups. Give them clear, realistic instructions of what is expected of them. Make sure that all students can participate and that the groups maintains their cohesion. If somebody is being left out or denied a voice, you will need to intervene. Quiet and shy people also have a right to voice an opinion. Good communication and interpersonal skills are essential.

Two patterns of interaction

There are two basic patterns for classroom interaction. We can represent them as the instructor and the students sitting in a circle.

In this one, the teacher does all the talking. If he/she interacts with students, then they only discuss with the teacher. Usually very boring.

In the next one, the teacher starts the discussion but soon the students are interacting with each other. Much more interesting.

Questioning

Questions are a basic teaching tool as well as an assessment tool, and you can be required to master the techniques. Your goal is to get students doing all the talking with you only keeping the discussion on track.

Write key questions in your lessons plans. Put some thought into them: they should mainly be open-ended discussion starters. Make sure the points of your questions are clear; ten words is a good maximum length.

Here are eight different kinds of questions, and you don't have to use them all. You can write the first four kinds in your lesson planning:

1. Use lead questions to open a new topic of discussion.
2. Closed questions give participants only a limited range of answers to choose from, such as Yes or No. They are usually fairly easy to answer, and are best for getting people to provide an initial response when they are reluctant to speak.
3. Open questions that only ask participants to report information. They are useful because participants often miss information.
4. Open-ended questions that ask participants to think or reflect. There usually isn’t a particular answer that you should look for, and when they give their answer, you need to ask the reasons why and follow through to causes. They cannot answer this kind of question by only repeating information.

If you're not used to teaching, you might want to write some follow-up questions in your preparation. With practice, you'll be able to make them up spontaneously as you go:

5. Clarifying questions are useful when someone has not explained something clearly.
6. Redirecting questions get people back on track when they have skirted past an important issue or are avoiding a sensitive topic.
7. Balancing questions. Every now and then, dominant group members push a quirky, off-balanced opinion, and the quieter group members seem to want to accept it. It would be a mistake to let the whole group unquestionably accept such an offbeat view, so you need to bring back some balance and responsibility. As discussion leader, you can simply question the extremist view. You can also ask students to respond to a strongly contrasting counterweight view.
8. Further exploration questions are useful to explore participant’s answers further. For example:
• James, that’s a good opinion. Why do you think that?
• Thanks, Jess. How would you … ?
• Okay. But what would you do if … ?

💡 Tips

1. Make sure that everyone who wants a say gets a say. Give everybody an opportunity to speak.
2. Control people who talk too much. The best way is to deflect: The people on that side of the room have been quiet; what do you think?   Close people down only when you have no choice. I think we need to give someone else a turn.
3. Pick up on good ideas that come up and explore them. Every now and then in a discussion, you get a golden opportunity to ask a focused question that will progress student learning very quickly.
4. Draw out students' opinions and fully explore all the most relevant issues:
• Use student's past experiences (e.g. work experience, background in another culture, etc.)
• Play the devil's advocate (graciously, of course). Take the opposite view and get students to defend their ideas. How would you respond to someone who said …?
• Identify issues that will make students take different opinions and discuss the matter with each other.
• Explore paradoxes. If people lean too heavily to one side of the paradox, back up the other side.
• Questions can be used in sequences to get students to explore the implications of their views, and to challenge apparent contradictions and logical fallacies.
5. Close down inappropriate lines of discussion immediately, such as destructive gossip, way off track, argumentative, etc.
6. Make sure the points of your questions are clear. Don't play Guess what's on my mind.
7. Don't push people for more if they've already explained themselves well.
8. Empathy can be used either well or poorly. It can be essential to understanding a viewpoint, but on the other hand, it can be used to justify opinions that are clearly indefensible.

About groups that are reluctant to speak

It can be difficult to start discussions in some groups, especially if they don't know each other. They might be waiting for someone else to break the ice. Some are cautious, bored or disinterested. In these cases, you have several options:

• Ask specific individuals what they think. For example, What about you, Krissy? What do you think? Then follow it up with: Mel, what do think? They might simply be waiting for you to ask.
• Simplify the question (all the way back to a simple yes/no question if need be) until they answer the blatantly obvious, then build back up to the complexity of your original questions.
• Use silence if they are finding speech difficult but need time to come to an answer. It requires skill, but silent periods are not always bad, especially when lots of talk from you would be a hindrance. First, if everybody is thinking about something in particular, a silent period allows people to learn. It also gives people time to think about a particularly poignant question before they answer. You can push them to give answers by staying quiet, but you lose the opportunity if you talk too much. Second, you can give them a reflection time, which is very helpful if the group is accustomed to talking without thinking. You can build on new learning once the silence has finished.

About quiet people

Some people are naturally shy; they just want to be listeners and don’t want to speak. Others are naturally inarticulate and unskilled at expressing their ideas. It’s okay; they might be taking everything in and learning lots. You have several options:

1. They might contribute later when they are more comfortable in the group.
2. When they contribute, make them glad they did.
3. Ask them a question. They might be glad of the opportunity.
4. Defend them when more boisterous students criticize their ideas.
5. Quiet students often have good ideas, even though they won't talk about them much. Take the opportunity to explore their ideas.

Socratic questioning

Socrates was a Greek philosopher who lived about 2,500 years ago, and is probably still the most important person in the use of questions in teaching. From his time, questions have been most helpful in teaching: