Questions are precious. Going back thousands of years to Confucius and Socrates, educators have appreciated the value of questions. However, encouraging students to ask questions other than “What’s going to be on the test?” can be difficult. Perhaps, the CL technique Exchange-a-Question can help.

In Exchange-a-Question, students write questions for each other and evaluate each other’s answers. This fits with student-centered education. So often in education, almost all the questions are asked by teachers, who also are the only ones who evaluate the quality of students’ answers. Teachers’ questions and teachers’ evaluations of answers are still important in CL and other student-centered methodologies. However, in CL, student questions play a more significant and influential role.

Here are the steps in Exchange-a-Question.

Step 1: The class discusses types of questions. They discuss the difference between searching questions and thinking questions. Searching questions are those where students have already been given all the information they need to form an answer. Such information is provided by their teachers or in their study materials. Students’ task is to search for information based on the provided study materials.

In contrast, thinking questions ask students to go beyond the information they have been given. Exchange-a-Question can work with searching and thinking questions, but it is important to include thinking questions, because so many important areas of life require deep thinking.

Step 2: Students form pairs. Each member of the pair works alone to write one or more questions. They also write answers to their questions. Why do students write answers to their own questions? When we teachers construct questions for our students, it is also important for us to try answering our own questions, as it encourages us to write questions that are doable in terms of difficulty and the time required. Sometimes, we modify our questions after attempting to answer them. Students may do the same.

Step 3: Students exchange questions, but not answers. They construct answers to their partner’s questions.

Step 4: Students compare and discuss their answers to each other’s questions.

Reflective Break

Are your students good at asking thinking questions? How can you encourage them to do so?

Sample Response

My students usually are not good at asking thinking questions. Thus, I spend lots of time giving them examples of both thinking questions and answers to thinking questions.