How to ask questions

Asking questions that help someone formulate their answer, refine their meaning, and lead them to consider different perspectives than their own: that is an art.

Too often, our questions to pupils take the form of a 'What is...'-question (or a 'How-question', or a 'Where/when-questions': factual ones), while we should always consider asking 'Why'-questions - interpretive questions before pushing on with evaluative questions.

So broadly speaking, there are three types of question you need to know and use: they don't all produce the same types of answers, so it is really crucial to consider them individually and in relation to each other for your class.

Most importantly, you must always ask follow-up questions: do not be happy with one answer, one interpretation, one judgement: keep asking 'Why could it be so?', or 'Why do you think that?'; or of course: 'How else could it be, and why?'. Follow-up questions are crucial in the process of initiating discussions, keeping them going, and requiring readers to explain and substantiate their interpretations and views.

You use those to elicit information from the text (or the image): what do you see? what are the elements that make up the text (or the image)? 

These factual questions are used to Observe, collect information to think from. They start the process that will lead to interpretation, and then later on, evaluation

You use those to elicit interpretations. - plural. The goal is not to find some hypothetical, absolute truth about the text, but to generate ideas and themes that could be linked to the text and its elements.

Those questions are used to Interpret, and must make room for multiple possibilities from multiple readers.

You use those to elicit personal evaluations from readers: what do you, personally, think about a specific interpretation?

Those questions are used to Evaluate, that is, bring an interpretation (and all other possible interpretations) in contact with the world, society, and personal understanding. Evaluation allows you to compare and contrast different ways of seeing the world and of making sense of it, highlighting our diversity

Follow-up questions are extremely important in helping readers explain what they think and why they think it; it helps them develop their ideas, substantiate their answers, and consider alternatives.

Follow-up questions also indicate to a group that you are not happy with just one answer, and that your goal, when you ask something, is not to receive a perfect answer and move on, but on the contrary to dig deeper and understand more.