How to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom

Teachers ask hundreds of questions a day, but few receive training on how to craft them effectively. Intentional questioning can enhance understanding, foster creativity, and promote equitable participation. So, what do you need to know about questioning? One useful way to think about questions comes from James Gallagher and Mary Jane Ascher (1963), who identify four categories: Memory, Convergent, Evaluative, and Divergent.

This naming helps identify both the thinking level of a question and the type of student response it encourages. Like Bloom’s Taxonomy, it moves from lower to higher-order thinking. While Bloom's Taxonomy defines types of thinking, Gallagher and Ascher's framework helps teachers craft questions that prompt that thinking. In other words, Bloom guides what kind of thinking you want students to do. Gallagher and Ascher guide how to craft questions that prompt that thinking.

1. Memory Questions

Memory questions focus on factual recall. They’re essential for developing fluency and background knowledge and usually align with Bloom’s Remember level.

Example:

• What is the formula for the area of a triangle?

Instructional strategies like retrieval practice, daily review, and low-stakes quizzes can help strengthen this level of learning. Check out cognitive scientist Pooja K. Agarwal’s work for more on retrieval practice.

2. Convergent Questions

These questions require students to apply knowledge to arrive at a specific, correct answer, often with an explanation. They support Bloom’s Understand and Apply levels.

Example:

• How do we know the main character is changing in this chapter?

Structured routines such as Think-Pair-Share, sentence stems, and graphic organizers can enhance clarity and support all learners in reasoning through their responses.

Note: Memory and convergent questions help build foundational understanding and fluency. The key is to use them strategically: early in a learning sequence, during review, or to assess recall before applying knowledge in more complex ways. A helpful check is that if a student can answer with a single word, a list, or a definition, it’s likely a memory-level question. If every student gives roughly the same response, it’s probably convergent.

3. Evaluative Questions

Evaluative questions ask students to form a judgment based on evidence. There is no single correct answer, but responses must be grounded in reasoning.

Example:

• Which method is best for solving this problem and why? (This question asks students to make a judgment and requires them to support it with reasoning or evidence.)

Debates, rankings, and rubrics help students articulate and justify their thinking while developing argumentation and evidence-based reasoning skills.

4. Divergent Questions

Divergent questions push students into the realm of creativity, hypothesis, and complexity. As Ian Byrd explains, these are questions where the situation is “data-poor”—students cannot just look up the answer but must reason their way through uncertainty, make assumptions, and justify their thinking.

Example:

• How would this poem change if it were written from a different point of view (like the antagonist, a bystander, or nature)?

• What might happen if artificial intelligence made all legal decisions?

These questions reflect real-life ambiguity. Byrd emphasizes that while divergent questions can have many “right” answers, not all responses are equally valid. A strong answer reveals understanding of the concepts and texts in play.

To support divergent thinking in the classroom:

• Use "What if...?" routines or hypothetical redesigns (change the setting, reverse a decision, shift the perspective).

• Introduce scaffolded exploration, where students first engage in memory and convergent thinking before tackling the unknowns.

Note: Divergent questions may drift too far from students’ prior knowledge or instructional goals or be unanswerable at the student level if they lack sufficient grounding or are too abstract.

Tip: Try answering your questions first. This helps ensure they are challenging yet accessible and connected to prior learning.

Reflect & Try

Review a week’s worth of lessons and tally the types of questions you ask. Do they cluster in one category? How might you add more variety to question types?

Try crafting questions for each level, so students can build understanding by working through the different types of questions.

Examples Across Content Areas:

High School History

Memory: List three causes of the American Revolution.

Convergent: How did the Stamp Act contribute to colonial unrest?

Evaluative: Which cause of the American Revolution was the most significant? Provide reasons.

Divergent: Imagine you're a colonial leader trying to avoid war in 1775. Design a peace proposal that addresses both British economic concerns and colonial demands for representation. What compromises would you suggest?

Middle School Math

Memory: What is a unit rate? Give an example.

Convergent: A car travels 180 miles in 3 hours. What is its unit rate in miles per hour?

Evaluative: Two stores sell the same granola bars. One sells 6 bars for $4.20, the other sells 8 for $5.60. Which is the better buy? Justify your answer.

Divergent: Create a scenario where choosing the best unit rate is not about finding the cheapest option. Explain how context changes which rate is “better.”

Elementary Science

Memory: Name five animals that live in the rainforest.

Convergent: Which rainforest animal do you think is the best at hiding from predators? Why?

Evaluative: Which animal do you think is the most important to the rainforest ecosystem? Explain your choice.

Divergent: Imagine you could create a new animal to live in the rainforest. What features would it have to survive?

English

Memory: What is the definition of a metaphor?

Convergent: How does the author use metaphor in the poem to convey emotion?

Evaluative: Which metaphor in the poem is most effective in communicating the theme? Explain your reasoning.

Divergent: Imagine the poem is rewritten as a diary entry from the perspective of the poem’s speaker. How would this change the tone or message? Write a short example.

Consider using Gallagher and Ascher’s framework to guide lesson planning, analyze student responses, or reflect on instructional practice during PLCs.