Effective questioning

A large percentage of 'teacher talk' is questioning and it is one of the ways to promote reasoning.

Only some types of questions stimulate reasoning and these types often require that students report their thinking. Many are open questions which means there are a number of possible answers.

The best questions stimulate:

• conjecturing
• justifying
• verifying
• generalising
• explaining
• communicating contrary ideas and approaches
• self-reflecting about thinking (metacognition).

Some questions that stimulate reasoning are The W Questions.