Questioning

I think one of the things I have heard previous CT's struggle with is effective questioning.  This is not something that is only difficult in written assignments, but in class conversations as well.  In most of my observations, verbal questioning tends to be the most difficult to facilitate.  It requires thinking on your feet and actively guiding conversations while leading students into higher level thinking.  This is quite a task.  There are so many layers to consider.  There's the initial questions, a guiding or a grounding question, and then based on student responses, you must have follow-up questions ready.  It's a lot to contend with especially when students have different perspectives and backgrounds and can perceive a question differently then you intended it to sound.  Or sometimes, the questioning can create further confusion.  I have witnessed this in my internships where complex concepts are involved.  One of my main focuses for this internship is to employ questioning that promotes higher level thinking and guides students into critical thinking processes.  Many of the PBL lessons require students to use logic and analysis to solve problems but these things don't come naturally to most people so even if students have a strong background knowledge they still need scaffolding support to reach these levels of thinking.  According to much of the literature we have read in my classes, this is most effectively done with questioning.  My last CT was very good at questioning and besides the twenty-years of teaching she had done, she also said the she followed the Costa's Levels of Inquiry, questioning tool.  She said that she leaned heavily on the framework for the first several years of her career and then it just became a part of her teacher speech.  She shared a link with me and I am using this framework to help me develop effective questioning.  Here is the link:  https://1drv.ms/b/s!Ase1GFvbrRNvmlcvCmIXbtlMdsxX?e=CON0zP.  I am so thankful for resources like this and the one you shared as well.

The question that I have heard that is really effective in getting students to explain their thinking in long thoughts that often allows or encourages the use of content terms is, How do you know that?  It is usually used as a follow-up question.  I heard it used when my CT was trying to help student gather evidence to support a claim.  One question stem that I have heard used in many ways is, If _______ occurs then what is the next logical step?(or what is the most probable outcome?)  I definitely plan to use these and I would like to develop my own repertoire of effective questions.