Asking Good Questions

I am taking an online class and one of the things that our latest module was about was about how to ask students good questions during read-alouds.

This got me thinking that these same rules also apply to adults asking questions during twitter chat:
- Questions should help people understand their feelings and promote critical thinking
-Questions should help people develop their language & communication skills on their stance
 -Questions need to help make connections to past and future events or share experiences
-Questions need to introduce new ideas, events, and possibilities
-Each question should lead to multiple turns for each speaker

So, I decided to help create a little one-pager to help those as they think of questions when hosting a chat.

1)      Decide the increments between questions: This will determine the number of questions you should plan on. (I recommend either 10 or 15 minute increments)

2)      ICEBREAKER: Your first question should be something easy and catchy, you want people to respond. I generally ask for location (So cool that we can have global cohorts!) and ask them a fun question related to the theme of the chat (What is your favorite _insert theme_?)

3)      Last Question: I always plan my first & last questions first. The last Question should generally be a REFLECTION (Where people can share a take-away) or an ACTION PLAN (What will you do this week?)

4)      After the Icebreaker: Ask something open-ended (How do you define…? What is…? What do you remember about…? )

5)      Ask for examples: Encourage sharing of a pic, quote, or something that happened in class. Use tweetdeck, so that you have an example ready to go to MODEL for others what they can share.

And just some general things to be mindful of:

-You may have a mixed audience (Teacher, Admin, Coaches), so try to keep it open-ended. You don’t want to exclude people.
- Start with some simple questions to get people initially engaged and then dig deeper. Don’t scare people off!