Teachers are often encouraged to celebrate student questions. That’s because questions signal curiosity, engagement, and thinking. A classroom where students feel comfortable raising their hands is usually a healthy one.

But teachers also know that not every question is really about learning. Sometimes a student asks a question because they’re anxious.

• “Do I have to provide exactly three reasons? What if I write four?”
• “Is this for marks?”
• “Do we have to write in full sentences?”
• “What if I spell something wrong?”

These students aren’t really asking about the topic or the thinking behind the task. They’re trying to navigate uncertainty. School can feel like a place where small mistakes carry big consequences, so some students look for the safest possible path through the assignment.

Other questions come from a different place entirely.

• “What if …?”
• “But technically…?”

These questions can sound thoughtful, but they are more like intellectual flexing. The goal isn’t to deepen understanding, it’s to highlight a gap, poke at a loophole, or momentarily derail the task.

In both cases, the question isn’t really helping the class learn.

But, if we want classrooms that are driven by curiosity and understanding, it’s not enough just to teach students to ask questions. We need to teach students how to ask better questions. 

Here are two strategies I am employing:

1. Teaching Students What a Good Question Looks Like

One thing I’ve started doing early in the year is a short activity focused entirely on question-writing. It’s based on the Question Formulation Technique. You can find an example here. 

Basically, students generate as many questions as possible, they learn the different types of questions, and they practice improving questions to make them more useful.

2. Changing Up My Reading Routine

I’ve also started building question creation into our regular reading routine. When students read a text or source, they still do the usual things: read, take notes, answer questions, and discuss. But now they also do one more step: they must write a question for the class.

The prompt is simple: Write one question the class NEEDS to discuss about this topic. Your question should: a) help us understand the topic better, b) not have an obvious answer, and c) make us think!

I like this because it pushes students to think about the material in a different way. Instead of just extracting information, they have to identify the most interesting or puzzling idea in the reading. Next, it shifts the classroom dynamic. Instead of the teacher supplying all the questions, students begin generating the ones that drive discussion. And finally, this subtly redefines what a question actually does.

Let me know what you are doing to help your students create better questions!

Ed X!