The Art of Asking Questions with Tact, Diplomacy & Impeccable Timing

Asking the right questions at the right time is an art. Judging the best timing to share the answers is also an art - “”Ms.xxx! Not yet, please! We are almost there. We need a few more minutes. Please don’t share the answer yet.” You misjudge your timing or you say too much, and now you have robbed your students of an opportunity to have an “a-ha” moment. “If they were right, I’d agree, but it’s them they know not me.” Just so, Cat Stevens! [Father and Son] On the other hand, you could misjudge your timing by saying too little or too late and now you have robbed yourself of an opportunity to provide support and to foster your students’ confidence. You left them too long in the dark frustrated, they lost their motivation to follow your lesson. So how could we make sure that we are teachers, not thieves? This ain’t easy, is it now? “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t, everyone would do it.” [A League of Their Own] Right on, very young Tom Hanks!

 

[Students are engaged in an inquiry-based problem and either working alone or in groups. My Associate Teacher and I visit each student/group to check in.]

Me: “How is it going with the problem?”

Student: “Nowhere! This is really hard!”

Me: “What have you found out so far?”

Student: “xxx, yyy, and zzz.”

Me: ‘You are actually on a really good track to figure this out. You are missing just one key point. Take another look at how xxx and yyy are connected.”

Student: (considers for a minute) “I don’t get it! What am I missing?”

Me: “Are you really stuck? Do you want to think about it more alone or do you want me to give you a hint?”

Student: “No! I want to figure it out myself!”

Me: “Sounds good. You let me know when you are really really stuck. Then, we can talk about it together, okay?”

Student: “Okay.”

 

This is how a conversation usually goes with one of the students in my class (at the school where I am doing my Practicum). He is very smart and he is also one of the most eager students in class. He loves to share his ideas with his class, he loves to teach other students, and he has an incredible ability to focus and to persevere. One thing about him is that had I asked him any kind of leading or guiding questions in the above situation, he would have felt cheated. He is someone who craves the sense of accomplishment; he needs to know that he has conquered the problem himself. Which means, I have to wait for him to form very specific questions he would like to have answered and then, answer those questions without betraying any additional information. Interestingly, he is open to listen to alternative methods to solving the problem as long as he has figured out his solution beforehand.

 

He is an oddity (in a good way) among students who welcome to have someone nudging them in the right direction when they get stuck in one spot. He actually reminds me of me. A problem is presented in a class for students to solve. A teacher says you can work on the problem in a pair or in a group and collaborate with classmates. While I believe that I am better than my 7th graders at hiding this, my first instinct is to run to a corner of the classroom, put on a noise cancellation headphone, and try to figure it out myself. I am more than happy to share my ideas after I have solved it and I will ask questions when I know exactly what I need clarification on, but I would also feel cheated, if someone else solved it for me.

 

When my cohort visited an Elementary School and worked on math problems with students, something interesting happened. I was paired up with another student teacher and we were with a group of 4 boys. My partner took charge, asked one of the students to read out the problem, reviewed the parameters of the problems with the students, and immediately started “leading” students to get to the “correct” answer. I was a tad miffed, or a lot to be completely honest, because I would have given students some quiet time to think about the problem first, then have them talk about how to go about solving the problem in pairs or as a group of 4 before I intervened in their process of inquiry. I would have answered any questions they might have but I would have observed them initially to see how they approached the problem, how they worked together as a group, and whether they required my prompts to stay on task. Two of the students were outgoing and eager to work on the problem. One of the students was quieter but in his quiet way, he was paying close attention. Unfortunately, one of the students got left behind (alongside me). I would hazard a guess that he was not particularly fond of working within a group, especially when other students are already taking charge of answering the teacher’s questions and being the “stars” of the group. Within a few minutes, he was mentally “checked out”.

 

The group moved on to the second math problem (Appendix 1) and the group dynamic remained the same. So I asked the student who was disengaged (given that we were both sort of left out, it seemed apt) whether he would like to try solving the second problem on his own, if I gave him the manipulatives to work with. He reluctantly agreed and slowly started working on the problem. I drew a row of seven empty cells, placed chips in the cells, and drew arrows to show towards which direction chips can move (Appendix 2). The student played around moving the chips and he realized that this was not an easy problem to solve. However, instead of getting frustrated, I could see that he was intrigued by the problem because his posture changed - he was leaning against the chair at first but now he leaned in towards the desk.

 

He tried a few more times but he kept getting stuck at the same point, as he was repeating the same strategy over and over. He was muttering to himself and was clearly focused on the task. Hoping to get him out of the loop of repeating the same strategy, I asked him what was working and what was not working. After giving me an explanation, he mistakenly moved the chip towards a wrong direction, and this step allowed him to “solve” the problem. I refrained from pointing out the fact that he didn’t quite solve the problem because he immediately exclaimed, “I think I got it! But I am going to do it again so that I can make sure that I understand the problem. I don’t want it to be just luck!” Fair enough. He got stuck again trying to “prove” his solution. However, he refused to get any “”hints” for a good five minutes. Looking back, there are things I could have said without interrupting the process of his inquiry, which could have made the process smoother for him. Perhaps, I could have asked him to write down what pattern of movements did and did not work so that he can fall back on his own knowledge, understanding, and discoveries when he hit a barrier. Instead of using the word “hint’, I could have asked a very simple, open-ended question that might have sparked some connections in his brain. The art of asking the right questions at the right time is a hard skill to master and I am slowly learning it by trial and error.

 

-- “It’s supposed to be hard, If it wasn’t, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.” [Once again from A League of Their Own]