Making Questions Flow

Getting students to ask questions can feel like pulling teeth. How can teachers transform that feeling and create classrooms that come alive with questions? The authors, developers of the question formulation technique, suggest two simple changes: First, teachers need to give students both a structure and the opportunity to practice generating their own questions; second, teachers shouldn't communicate a judgment too quickly about the quality of the students' initial questions. Teachers can use student-generated questions to increase student engagement, to accelerate knowledge acquisition, and to assess students both formatively and summatively.