Planning strategic questions prior to lessons can be a game-changer. As mentioned previously, teachers do not have to give students as much information as traditional lessons often encourage. Instead, teachers should try prompting and guiding students to self-discovery through strategic questions. One of the best ways to plan strategic questions that help students move towards mastery of the lesson objective is to identify misconceptions they might have related to the objective. From there, develop questions that help students think through those misconceptions and move past them. This is empowering for students and helps develop their self-esteem since they are able to navigate challenges themselves, rather than being told the answers or remaining stuck.
For example, when teaching a math lesson about adding and subtracting fractions with like denominators, it is common for students to have a misconception about which numbers to add or subtract, often adding the numerators and adding the denominators. To help students work through this, the teacher can add context to the fractions and ask questions like, “What does the numerator represent?” and “What does the denominator represent?”
Once students can explain that the numerator represents a part of a whole and the denominator represents the whole, they can begin to understand through even more prompting and questioning that the denominator needs to be the same in order to do the computation. Instead of the teacher telling students to memorize a formula or telling them how to do the problem, they can empower students through questioning to create a more student-centered learning environment.