By Ty Kelly
Questions are an integral part of academic curriculum and essential to every student. Students have hundreds of questions in their mind. For students, asking their own questions is a first step towards fulfilling their knowledge gaps and solving their doubts. The process of asking questions enables them to connect their ideas in understanding of a subject. Questioning has the inbuilt potential to facilitate fruitful thinking in students. The questions of students serve beneficial for learners. The urge to learn more and quench their thirst for knowledge happens when students start questioning and fetch answers for those questions.
Pre-prepared questions
Students always know how the teaching process goes in their classrooms. Students can prepare questions earlier itself so that one can ask when the particular concept is being taught. Students can once go through their academic questions and frame their respective questions related to the subject. Good questions promote discussion and encourage exploration regarding the concept. Students can diagnose their understanding of concepts based on the questions they ask. Effective questions that are meaningful and relatable to the concepts helps the students to think more and solve more number of questions. Students when encouraged at this stage then the questions become a good source of information about each specific topic of the lesson. This helps the students to connect the theories with their real-life application and helps to think practically, which automatically leads to good grades.
Reinforcement helps students
The instructor must reinforce student responses and questions in a positive way in order to boost future participation. The questions vary from one subject to another. The English questions vary from the maths questions. The student must be capable of asking questions in various kinds and must know to answer them in all kinds. Students must be answered and guided in a proper way so that they will have a crystal clear understanding of their concepts. Instructors must indulge themselves in answering and connecting those doubts to live application and examples.
High order thinking skills (HOTS) questions
A new concept of questions namely High order thinking skills (HOTS) is introduced where students are asked to pose questions while practising a variety of learning activities. These types of questions include a case study on various topics and students are asked to frame as many questions as possible about the topic. This helps in effective questioning and students get deeper knowledge about the subject. This also develops the basic analytical skills of the learner and aids in scoring high.
Questions are the most powerful teaching and learning tools we know. Hence, choosing best practices will significantly enhance the quality of teaching and learning. Questioning, learning and answering questions all are the stepwise methods of the academic curriculum. When the first step is cleared then the rest of the process becomes easier. Asking and answering questions is a fundamental ingredient in the learning process. Student when learns both these key ingredients then no one can stop him from scoring high and achieving good grades.
