[Part 7 in a series about improving gospel teaching. Previous entries in the series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6]

One Sunday last year, I attended a lesson on the book of Jeremiah. The teacher introduced Jeremiah the person and then produced this poser: “So, what kind of prophet was Jeremiah?”

Silence. No one answered. As usually happens, the teacher waited for a little while, then gave up and went on to the rest of the lesson. Perhaps disheartened, she asked a total of one (1) other question the remainder of the lesson.

It’s always tough when teachers ask questions and no one answers–although in this case, I had no idea how to answer that question, and neither did anyone else.

“What kind of prophet was Jeremiah?” Like, what, a ‘righteous’ or ‘wicked’ prophet? ‘Liberal’ or ‘conservative’? ‘Bearded’? ‘Left-handed’? What does that mean? (She didn’t explain what answer she was looking for afterwards, either, so it remains a mystery.)

Every teacher knows class participation is important–and one of the best ways to elicit class participation is to ask questions. Oftentimes though, teachers will ask questions that get no response, and then simply give up, thinking, ‘Well, it’s obvious the students just don’t feel like participating today–I’ll just keep talking, instead…’.

But there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ questions (and different levels in between). Some questions are more effective than others in creating responses and participation from students, and some questions are more effective in producing helpful and enlightening comments and answers from students, which add to the Spirit of the lesson. Students will almost always seem like they ‘just don’t feel like participating today’ in response to ‘bad’ questions…but oftentimes a good question or two will get those hands shooting up into the air again immediately.

Let’s discuss different types of questions and their pros and cons.

“Factual” Questions: These are questions that have ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers. (”What appeared to the shepherds to announce the birth of Christ?”, “What did the Lord command Joseph Smith and the early Saints to build in D&C 57?”)

There are a couple of problems with factual questions:

(1) They aren’t very useful. If the question has a ‘correct’ answer, then presumably the teacher already knows what it is. If so, then why not just tell the class in the form of a statement rather than a question what the ‘answer’ is. We saw in the last section that factual knowledge has a legitimate place in a lesson, but to a student who didn’t know the ‘fact’ in question, there’s no difference in learning between hearing it from the teacher’s mouth, versus the mouth of other students who answered the question themselves.

(2) Human Psychology: Most people are hesitant to answer questions with ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers, simply because no one wants to be ‘wrong’. It’s very embarrassing to raise your hand, confidently blurt out the answer, and then realize it was incorrect and you’ve made yourself look stupid. Someone who has undergone an experience such as this in class will be far less likely to respond to any future question (factual or otherwise) in class afterwards. Other people in the class will probably be less likely to respond to questions in the future for the same reason (“Don’t want to embarrass myself like THAT guy…”) A teacher who relies on factual questions will probably end up having fewer and fewer students volunteer answers every class, as they will start to feel the pressure of being on, essentially, a gospel trivia show.

“Opinion” Questions: These are questions that have no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers, but rather have students share their personal feelings on a subject. “Opinion” questions will usually form the best foundation for useful questions in class–(1) students will be more likely to answer because there is no ‘wrong’ answer, and (2) NOT having a wrong answer makes the answers more revealing and useful to a class, because they consist of thoughts and ideas that are unique. The purpose behind student participation in the first place is to share things that teachers can’t prepare or substitute for themselves. Opinion questions help provide that element of class discussion to the lesson. (Some opinion questions: “Why do you think Zacharias had a hard time believing what the angel told him in the temple?” “What are some things in our own lives that are hard to accept and have faith in?”)

“Leading” Questions: Sometimes a teacher will ask a ‘opinion’ question with many possible answers…but treat it like a ‘factual’ question because the teacher is really looking for one specific answer in particular, usually as a lead-in to the rest of the lesson. A teacher asks “What are some things that keep us from attending church regularly?”, for example–a question that has many reasonable answers–but is really looking for someone in the class to say “unrepented sin” because he/she has prepared a large section of the lesson on repentance and wants to head into it smoothly.

Leading questions are dangerous because the teacher can oftentimes be dismissive of some answers from students that are perfectly legitimate…but treated as ‘wrong’ because it wasn’t what the teacher wanted. This dampens class participation, because students start to feel like class has become a game of ‘Guess what the teacher is thinking?’ instead of an open discussion of personal feelings about the gospel. Teachers should be open and flexible when asking ‘leading’ questions that appropriate answers are given at least a little validation, even if the ultimate goal is to lead the class discussion in a specific direction.

“Controversial” Questions: Like the spanking question mentioned earlier in the series, some questions just aren’t suitable for creating a spiritual environment within class time. Just being an opinion question does not make it a ‘good’ question, if the resulting discussion does not fit within the purpose and scope of the lesson. Even non-controversial, but still tangential questions can detract from lessons instead of add, if they don’t focus on the principles the teacher has set as a goal to have the students understand by the end of class.

“Obvious” Questions: These are a subset of factual questions that everyone already knows the answer to, but the teacher feels like having someone in class say out loud, instead of the teacher saying so. (“Noah gathering all the animals and put them in a ____?”) These may be suitable for a Primary lesson with a group of Sunbeams, but for older students these generally aren’t useful questions…sometimes even condescending.

Oftentimes a teacher asks a ‘obvious’ question, only because he/she knows ‘class participation is important’ and that it’s ostensibly better to have a student say it instead of the teacher…except that with blatantly obvious questions most people will just sit there silently because they already know the answer and know everyone else already knows the answer, and everyone will wait until someone gets tired of waiting and blurt out the correct answer. I believe students will respond better to questions that are ‘challenging’ (yet ‘clear’…see Jeremiah question above) instead of ‘easy’ and ‘obvious’.

“Yes/No” Questions: The main problem with questions that can be answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is that they aren’t very revealing. If they are ‘factual’ questions, we have the same problems as above. If they are ‘opinion’ questions, a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer still doesn’t tell you much at all, other than a strict black-or-white indication of where someone stands on an issue. Since most gospel principles have many layers of depth beyond a simple ‘black/white’ level (that’s why we have class discussion to begin with…), asking yes or no questions also tends not to provide any helpful information to either the teacher or others in the class. (“Does God want us to honor the priesthood?”–not very useful, what does a ‘yes’ answer really mean? Why not ask: “What does ‘honoring the priesthood’ mean to you?”)

“Rhetorical” Questions: Of course, by definition, rhetorical questions aren’t really questions at all from a student participation standpoint, but many real questions don’t provide meaningful student participation either, and might just as well have been rhetorical. Many yes/no questions, or ‘obvious’ questions don’t offer anything significant to the discussion even if a student provides the answer instead of the teacher, and teachers might be better served by just making them rhetorical–saving better questions to be the ‘real’ questions posed to the class for responses. (Rephrasing the above example: “Does God want us to honor the priesthood? Absolutely. But HOW do we ‘honor the priesthood’?”)

“Request” Questions: Many teachers, when teaching a lesson on charity, will ask “Does anyone have an experience to share with the class about charity?” This is a fine question on the face of it–personal experiences shared by the student on an issue can greatly augment a lesson. Unfortunately, many times this ‘good’ question is met with awkward silence from the students.

The problem is: most students won’t be able to come up with a good experience to share at a moment’s notice, right when the teacher asks for one. Memory can be a funny thing–you never know when a useful experience can come to mind. It might be immediately right when the teacher asks, or it might be ten minutes later. It might be four hours later when having dinner and reflecting for a minute on the day’s lesson.

Teachers who wish to have students share experiences like this will probably have to make allowances for the fact that broad questions in the form of “Does anyone have an experience to share about…” are not likely to spur immediate responses due to the unreliability of memory, and might just end up in an awkward silence just like any old ‘bad’ question.

However, student experiences applying gospel principles to their lives can be some of the most valuable ‘participation’ a teacher can have… Are there ways to increase the effectiveness of ‘request’ questions? Some teachers I’ve seen have a variety of techniques.

(1) Asking a few students a week before to be prepared to share an experience on such-and-such a topic during class on Sunday. This allows the teacher to call on them directly when the time comes, instead of risking a public question and getting no response. This lead time gives those students more time to ponder and think of a relevant experience.

The downsides to selective invitations are (a) those students might feel obligated to come up with something to share since they’ve been asked, even if the only thing they can think of isn’t too interesting or relevant–and might turn out to be a waste of class time. And (b) the teacher can’t tell ahead of time which students have the best experiences to share, and by asking only a select few, the risk is then that the students with truly powerful experiences to share won’t get a chance because they weren’t one of the arbitrary ‘chosen ones’ in the beginning.

(2) Giving students a ‘head-start’: This is probably the most effective method that I’ve seen in getting good experiences. A teacher starts the lesson by saying: “Today’s lesson is on charity. As class continues, I want everyone to think of experiences in your life where you’ve received charity from others that you’d like to share with the class. We’ll have time later in class for those who wish to share to do so.” Then the teacher starts the normal lesson and 20-30 minutes later can ask “So…does anyone have an experience about charity to share?” With that ‘lead time’, students are much more likely to have come up with something by then to share immediately.

Some teachers give students an entire week’s head start, by mentioning at the end of one lesson what the next lesson is going to be on, and giving them the request to think about related experiences over the next seven days to share next class. (Human nature being what it is, though…most students will probably promptly forget about this request during the week, and will probably need to be reminded at the beginning of the next class, anyway…)

The Issue of Silence: Most teachers HATE asking a question and having the class sit there silently without anyone speaking. Many teachers feel asking a question that gets no response is as embarrassing to them as giving a ‘wrong’ answer is to a student. Most teachers instinctively have an internal clock that starts counting down the moment the question is spoken, and if no one answers within a set period of time, the teacher goes on to something else.

Like questions, though, there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ silences. Oftentimes a good question will elicit no responses…yet still be good, because it has provoked in the students’ minds a deep train of thought about an important subject. Some questions, dealing with deeply personal issues, may actually be better without actual responses–something meant to have students ponder in their own minds without speaking aloud.

Sometimes teachers have their internal clocks fire too quickly–the fear of silence is so great, they cut off that useful ‘ponder’ time before it has time to properly complete. Like silences in testimony meeting, some silences can be spiritual–it’s up to the teacher to ask good questions, and fight off their natural fear of no one talking in class in order to provide a spiritual experience. Due to the unreliability of memory as mentioned, or due to natural hesitance, sometimes teachers just need to be a little patient, and after a few seconds someone will in fact raise their hand and share something meaningful.

Summary: Asking questions is an important part of any lesson–and questions are something the teacher can prepare in advance, without needing to wait to see how class develops to adapt. I encourage teachers to look carefully at all the questions they are planning to ask during a lesson, and audit them: Is this question clear? Do the students know what answer I am expecting? What kind of responses am I likely to get from this question? Are those responses useful to my lesson? How can I prepare them before I ask this question so that the responses will be more meaningful? And so on… I believe asking good questions can be one of the most effective ways a teacher can bump a lesson up from adequate to good (or higher) and make the lesson memorable and spiritual from the students’ perspective.

Next: Conclusion–what needs to happen within the Church

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