Opening Prayer

Loving heavenly Father we come to you this hour asking for your blessing and help as we are
gathered together. We pray for guidance in the matters at hand and ask that you would clearly show
us how to conduct our work with a spirit of joy and enthusiasm. Give us the desire to find ways to
excel in our work. Help us to work together and encourage each other to excellence. We ask that we
would challenge each other to reach higher and farther to be the best we can be. We ask this in the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

Closing Prayer
Heavenly Father as we come to the end of our time together we thank you for what has been
accomplished here today. May the matters discussed serve as a catalyst to move us forward and
cause us to advance and see growth in all areas of our lives. May we leave here recognizing You are
the God of all wisdom and You are willing to lead us forward. This we pray in the name of the Lord
Jesus. Amen
 Asking questions and eliciting answers
Learning outcome
Completing the activities on this screen will contribute to your ability to ask questions in ways that elicit
answers.
Types of questions
Depending on the types of answer you are looking to elicit, and the confidence of your students, there are a
range of different question types you might use. Try to assess the following questions. For each type of
question, make a note of what you think the strengths and weaknesses might be in terms of eliciting student
responses. Pause before moving on to consider our thoughts.
Closed questions have right and wrong answers.
Example: "What was the date of the Battle of Hastings?"
Our thoughts: Students often avoid answering closed questions as they do not wish to look foolish if wrong,
smug if correct or because it is not a very interesting thing to do. Often only the same few students answer
closed questions and it rarely provides an opportunity to discuss answers.
Open questions have many possible answers.
Example: "What was the significance of the Battle of Hastings?"
Our thoughts: These questions respect students' intelligence and may encourage a response as there is less
risk of being seen to be 'wrong'. But students might require a little time or private discussion before they are
willing to offer an answer in public.
Prompts for reflection may have no 'right answers' at all - they are designed to prompt
students to think.
Example: "If the Saxons had won the Battle of Hastings, instead of the Normans, what might the consequences
for the future of England have been?"
Our thoughts: This is an excellent type of question for eliciting student involvement. One of the most important
characteristics of good questions is that they prompt more thinking, not just an answer.
'Guess what I'm thinking questions' involve an open question, to which there are many
possible right answers, but the teacher is only interested in one of them.
Example: "Why did the Normans win the Battle of Hastings?"
Teacher's answer: "The Saxons were exhausted from their march from an earlier battle in Northern England."
Our thoughts: This is a particularly stupid game some teachers play in which the question is posed in such a
way that no one could know the answer as only the teacher knows which answer is wanted. Students who are
prepared to join in the game can only guess, and they can only feel foolish if they guess wrongly. Most students
sensibly refuse to join in.

How to elicit answers

From these examples, we might conclude that reflective and open questions are generally most likely to
encourage answers from students. But simply posing a question in the right form is only half the battle. You
also need to ask the question in an appropriate way – in particular:

 Ask sensible questions. Not multiple part questions. Not trivial questions. But sufficiently challenging
questions that are possible to answer from either prior knowledge or the content of the lecture.
 Allow plenty of time – simply wait. Students need time, on their own, to make notes and think. Most
new teachers feel they have waited an age for students to answer their question when in reality they
 may wait only a second or two. Having the confidence to pause – perhaps for ten seconds – allows
students to formulate an answer they would be prepared to voice.
 Ask a particular student, who cannot hide.
 Allow students to discuss the question in pairs or threes – then ask the groups to report back. If
students are still reluctant to speak in public, ask the pairs to write down an answer and collect several
to read out before commenting on them. This can be particularly helpful for students whose native
language is not English, who will have an opportunity to share their ideas but may not themselves
have to be the person who expresses them to the class as a whole.
 Offer alternative answers and ask, "Who thinks this is the best answer? Raise your hands. And who
thinks this alternative is the better answer?" This can be achieved very effectively, with high levels of
student engagement, using technology. This is explored later in the chapter.

Responding to students' answers

There are a number of good techniques that can be used to respond to students' answers during a lecture. As
far as possible always try to be conversational, enthusiastic and non-judgemental; try to pitch what you say to
encourage further answers (e.g. "That's interesting: I hadn't thought of that! What else?").
Dealing with 'wrong' answers
Never just say 'Wrong!" It humiliates the student and deters anyone else from offering answers in the future. If
an answer is wrong, try the following strategies:

 Ask several people and elicit several answers before offering your own answer or comments, and then
do so in a general and depersonalized way. For example, "So we have a range of views here. Let's
look at these answers and examine them", rather than "John and Felix are wrong and Raul is right."
 Offer alternative answers of your own – some more plausible than others – so that everyone in the
room is thinking about which the better answers are. Look round the room and alight on eager faces,
using open hand gestures to invite additional comments or alternative answers.

You may occasionally encounter individuals who answer in unhelpful ways, deliberately or unintentionally.
Tactics for dealing with difficult students are dealt with in 'Lecturing 2'.
Dealing with 'right' answers
If an answer is right, or half right, use it as a way to elaborate on the point in an informal way. Try to avoid
condescension ("Well done!") but do try to make the student feel good and encourage others to answer in the
future (e.g. "That's interesting"; "That's a useful answer for me because..."; "Yes, and what is more...").

Active and quiet students

You will encounter some students, usually in the front row, who try to answer everything. Once you have
spotted them, try to address questions to a different part of the room. You may need to be explicit about this,
e.g. "Thanks Yazmin, I'm going to try to involve others for a while now."
The number of 'quiet' students, though, is likely to outweigh the number of overactive ones. Some of them you
can get involved by using the tactics outlined in this section – but some will not join in whatever you do. They
may be thinking hard without feeling the need to say anything. Or they may be prepared to discuss in private,
but not speak in public. There is probably nothing you can do about this; putting pressure on individuals is
never a good idea.
Quote
If I am going to show a graph, instead of asking an individual student to predict what shape the graph will
be, I'll often first ask students, in pairs, to predict what the shape of the graph will look like, and to draw it.
I'll then move round the room collecting up different and interesting-shaped graphs and display them, one
at a time. I'll then show my own graph and explain why it is the shape it is. I never make public whose
graph is whose as this can make students a bit shy, especially if the graph is clearly wrong.
An award-winning National Teaching Fellow, extract from an education lecture given at Oxford Brookes
University
Optional activity
Duration: 10 minutes
Click on this link http://academicearth.org/lectures/morality-of-muder-and-cannibalism to watch a video in
which Justice Michael Sandel offers up a moral dilemma to a large lecturing hall. As you watch, consider
what methods and techniques the lecturer is using both in asking questions, and in responding to the
students' answers. Make notes on these techniques in your teaching portfolio then continue to view our
own thoughts.
Our thoughts:
This teacher has a very nice style of both eliciting student answers to his questions, even in a huge
lecture theatre, and responding to what students have to say in a way that respects their bravery in
speaking up and encourages others to speak up in response to later questions. They are always open
questions to which there can be many different kinds of answers rather than just one right answer and lots
of wrong answers. And he responds encouragingly – to one hesitant student he says, "That's a very good
answer". To less impressive contributions he sometimes probes gently, allowing plenty of time, to try and
tease out something more worthwhile, makes a précis of what students have said so that it is more
coherent, or simply moves on and asks someone else. He does not criticise or tell students they are
wrong, and he does not go on to give a 'right answer' himself. Rather he uses what students have said as
the next stage of his exploration. The way he does this continually engages the students and keeps them
thinking and involved.