Prompts & Questions¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 1 claim (1 for) · 4 studies (2 quant-synthesis, 1 causal, 1 associational), q2–q4 · 1 of 4 report an effect size

Description¶

Prompts and questions are pre-planned cues — distributed before, during, or after reading and discussion — that direct learner attention to key ideas, elicit reasoning, and structure productive dialogue. Well-designed questions do more than check comprehension: they ask learners to explain, connect, evaluate, and interrogate texts and each other, converting passive reception into active knowledge construction.

Design Implications¶

Guiding questions work because they induce self-explanation [+S] and other generative processing that passive reading or listening does not. Their effectiveness depends on question type: higher-order questions (why, how, what-if, compare) produce deeper learning than recall questions, but only when learners have enough prior knowledge to answer them [~M]. Generic prompts ("think about the theme") underperform prompts that name a specific reasoning move ("What evidence does the author give for this claim, and what would weaken it?").

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Questions sequenced from comprehension toward analysis and evaluation, matched to learners' current knowledge
• Sufficient wait time (3+ seconds) after posing a question; shortening wait time collapses the strategy into rapid recall
• A discussion environment where tentative answers are safe — questions about power, justice, and equity especially require norms for respectful disagreement
• A mechanism for learners to respond to each other, not only to the instructor (Class Discussion)

Constraints¶

• Questions pitched above learners' prior knowledge produce guessing and frustration rather than reasoning [~M] — the expertise-reversal effect applies: support that helps novices can burden more knowledgeable learners
• Over-reliance on instructor-posed questions keeps learners in a responsive stance; students taught to generate their own questions show stronger independent comprehension [King's guided questioning research] [+M]
• IRE-style recitation (initiate–respond–evaluate) with single known answers suppresses the elaboration the strategy is meant to produce [-M]
• Cold-calling without preparation raises anxiety for some learners and can reduce participation quality [~W]

Implementation Variability¶

• Pre-reading prompts activate prior knowledge and set a purpose for reading (Activation)
• During-reading annotation prompts ("mark the sentence where the argument turns") pair questioning with Annotating
• Reciprocal questioning: students generate questions for peers using prompt cards or question stems (King's guided peer questioning)
• Discussion protocols (e.g., Socratic seminar, gallery walk) distribute questioning across students
• Equity-focused prompts direct attention to perspective, power, and whose voice is absent from a text or dataset

Target Learners¶

• Middle and secondary students (7–12) reading complex texts across disciplines [+M]
• Novices benefit most from structured question stems; advanced learners benefit more from open, student-generated questions [~M]
• Multilingual learners need questions built with Accessible Vocabulary & Syntax — plain-language stems with sentence frames preserve the cognitive demand while lowering the linguistic barrier

Target Learning Goals¶

• Conceptual understanding: why- and how-questions force explanation beyond paraphrase self-explanation improves conceptual understanding [+S]
• Critical literacy: evaluating evidence, perspective, and framing in texts
• Discussion and argumentation skills: responding to and building on others' reasoning
• Reflection and metacognition: prompts after tasks ("What was hardest, and what did you do about it?")

Instructions¶

1. Identify the 2–4 key ideas or tensions in the text or topic; write one question per idea, moving from literal comprehension to interpretation to evaluation.
2. Draft question stems that name the reasoning move ("What evidence…", "What would change if…", "Who benefits from…").
3. Distribute prompts before reading or viewing so learners read with a purpose; for longer texts, embed prompts at intervals (Advance Organizers can frame the set).
4. During discussion, pose the question, provide wait time, then require students to respond to one another before you evaluate (Class Discussion).
5. Gradually hand question generation to students using stems, fading your prompts as they internalize the moves (Scaffolding).
6. Close with a reflective prompt that asks students to connect the discussion to their own reasoning or to issues of power and equity in the material.

Related Strategies¶

• Think-Aloud — modeling the question-asking moves students are later prompted to make themselves
• Case Studies — cases supply the authentic material that discussion prompts interrogate
• Analogies — "how is this like X?" prompts use analogy as a question type
• Edit ambiguous student questions into clear, directive prompts before posing them to ChatGPT

Examples¶

• Reciprocal Teaching (Palincsar & Brown) — students take turns leading small-group discussion using four prompt types (predict, question, clarify, summarize), with teacher modeling fading over ~20 sessions.
• Facing History and Ourselves (https://www.facinghistory.org) — published discussion prompts and journal prompts that guide secondary students through texts on identity, power, and justice.
• Socratic seminar in ELA — students prepare open-ended questions about a novel in advance; the seminar is run entirely from student-generated questions.

Key Sources¶

• King, A. (1994). Guiding knowledge construction in the classroom: Effects of teaching children how to question and how to explain. American Educational Research Journal, 31(2), 338–368. doi:10.3102/00028312031002338
• Rosenshine, B., Meister, C., & Chapman, S. (1996). Teaching students to generate questions: A review of the intervention studies. Review of Educational Research, 66(2), 181–221. doi:10.3102/00346543066002181
• Palincsar, A. S., & Brown, A. L. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities. Cognition and Instruction, 1(2), 117–175. doi:10.1207/s1532690xci0102_1
• Chi, M. T. H., de Leeuw, N., Chiu, M.-H., & LaVancher, C. (1994). Eliciting self-explanations improves understanding. Cognitive Science, 18(3), 439–477. doi:10.1207/s15516709cog1803_3
• Rowe, M. B. (1986). Wait time: Slowing down may be a way of speeding up! Journal of Teacher Education, 37(1), 43–50. doi:10.1177/002248718603700110