This is an easy question to answer. You should be asking questions all of the time! However, the type of questions you ask should vary depending on which stage of the inquiry process the stu-dents are at. It is difficult to tell you exactly which questions you should be using; each lesson and experiment is different and lends it self to different questions. However, generally speaking the questions you ask should be prompting students to use certain skills at certain times of the lesson. Below is a rough guide of the type of questions you should be asking and when, which you can be use as a general guide. Choose which questions you ask to suit what you are trying to get students to do.
Questions to ask in the introduction phase
At the beginning of the inquiry lesson you should be asking questions which force students to look more carefully at what you give them to examine and which make them think about what they see happening. You should not be asking questions that test students� knowledge. Good questions to ask at this stage include:
� Have you seen?
� Did you notice?
� What did you see?
� What happened?
Resist the temptation to tell students what is happening or to give them �the right answer.� Stu-dents may at this stage provide wrong answers or have false ideas. Wrong answers should not be corrected. These misconceptions should hopefully be ironed out during the course of the inquiry investigation. Remember this stage is simply about getting the students interested in the topic be-ing taught and in finding out what ideas they have.
Questions to ask in the question and hypothesis generation phase
In this stage of the inquiry-based lesson you are trying to get students to produce their own ques-tions that can then be used to form the basis of an investigation. This is a difficult task for which a standard list of suitable questions cannot be given. Teachers have to �feel� what is the right ques-tion to ask. A good first step is to try to narrow the topic being talked about down and to concentrate on one specific aspect. Good questions to ask at this stage include:
� What could you do to find out?
� What questions do you have?
� What happened when?
To find out what questions to ask in other stages of the inquiry-lesson, refer to 'teaching inquiry-based science' by Mark Walker. Available from Amazon here.