Have you ever heard someone say “There are no bad questions”? I would argue that there are definitely “bad questions” when it comes to students and their learning. Don’t get me wrong, answering questions and helping students is one of my favorite parts of being a teacher. The problem is that not all questions are created equal and some questions inhibit learning. 

Over five years ago I shifted to a gradeless classroom in a school that still requires grades. I do this in three ways. First, I give students meaningful and timely written and/or verbal feedback on their work. Second, I allow students to have multiple opportunities to show understanding. Third, I have students constantly self-assess their work for understanding. At the end of the quarter, students gather their best work and, with the help of some guidelines from me, come up with a grade that they believe best represents the level of understanding they have shown throughout the quarter. I then conference with each student and we come to an agreement on their grade. This is the only time that I discuss grades with students throughout the whole marking term. Prior to this shift, I taught very traditionally, and for fifteen years I fielded questions without realizing they did not promote learning. After going gradeless, most of these questions vanished.

The first couple of questions that I found to inhibit learning were similar: “Is this going to be graded?” and “How much is this worth?” This showed that students were focusing on completion rather than understanding. In an effective classroom you want students to work through tasks that help them understand a concept rather than doing a task to just “get it done.” The first step to removing this mindset is to remove grades from the situation. If you don’t give students a grade on an assignment, then their reason for doing it changes to “I need to understand this.”

Another question that students used to ask me near the end of each marking term was “Can I have an extra credit assignment?” When students ask this they are playing the grading game. They realize that the grading period is coming to an end and they want to improve their grade. They are not trying to learn a specific topic or show understanding of a concept that was taught. They want a higher grade and that’s it!! Now that I have removed grades, I find that students approach me with a different question; “Can you show me how to do this?” Since my students are self-assessing their work regularly throughout the term, they always have a strong grasp of where they have shown understanding and where they are developing their understanding. They use my verbal and written feedback to retry concepts that gave them difficulty. The days of students looking for points on their grade at the end of a marking term have ended. Instead, they have spent the quarter reviewing their work and focusing on their learning instead of grades.

A few years ago I adopted the Thinking Classroom model of teaching that was researched and developed by Professor Peter Liljedah. If you are not familiar with this type of teaching, it revolves around curriculum-based tasks that students complete in randomly selected groups while standing at whiteboards. The idea behind this teaching model is to create discussion, not only amongst students that are in the same group, but also between the different groups of students. The goal is to create the flow of information around the room. In Professor Liljedhal’s book, Building Thinking Classrooms, he uses the phrase “stop thinking questions” to describe some questions that students ask in a classroom setting which can stop the flow of learning from moving not only throughout the group but also around the room. Much like the questions that I described earlier, “stop thinking questions” are asked for the wrong reason; however, there are strategies that you can use to redirect these questions. 

One of these “stop thinking questions” is “Is this going to be on the test?” The problem with this question is that by asking, students are only doing the problem to learn it for the test. It is a variation of “Will this be graded?” and it causes students to stop thinking about how to develop an understanding of the problem. Most likely you are not giving students “busy work”; instead, students are completing a task that is related to what they are learning and therefore it will be on a test. It is best not to engage and just smile at the student and walk away. Your action shows that you heard their question but are not going to answer it because you want them to return their focus to the task at hand instead of spending time on a question that is not related to the content. 

Another question that stops students from thinking is “Is this correct?” At first glance you might think that this question is appropriate, but if you answer “yes” the students immediately stop thinking about the work that they have completed, and if you answer “no” they follow up with “What did I do wrong?” Either way, they are no longer thinking on their own; instead, they are looking to you to do the thinking for them. What you want to do is to keep students in the flow of learning by answering their question with a question. Professor Liljedahl suggests some responses that you can give to students who ask this question, such as: “Can you show me how you did that?”or “Why do you think that it is correct?” Once they have answered, tell them to talk with other groups to see if they have the same result and then, if they are confident in their work and answer, move them to the next step of the problem. The one caveat is that if every group in the room is having difficulty, you need to bring the entire class together to do some reteaching and then have them go back to work in their groups.

There are, however, some very good questions that students can ask that show they are in the flow of learning. These include clarifying questions about the problem or questions about moving onto the next step of the problem. When students ask these questions, they are clearly engaged in their learning.

Removing grades from the general discussion throughout the quarter and placing the focus on feedback, reworking, retrying, and understanding moves students towards “I understand this!” Creating a classroom environment where students don’t look to the teacher for answers but instead defend their work and talk with other students will promote learning flow through the classroom. 

Andrew Burnett currently works as a seventh grade math teacher at FA Day Middle School in Newton, Mass. He regularly blogs and tweets about education. He currently resides in central Massachusetts with his wife, two children, a dog, and a rabbit.