Students as Questioners : What is a Question? Questions. We ask them when we need directions. We ask them when we don’t understand. Sometimes we ask questions in outrage, other times we ask them in curiosity and wonder. Sometimes questions are rhetorical, other times they are urgent. If we want to help students be questioners, we need to help them understand the types and purposes of questions and ways to use questions effectively. For the next few weeks I’ll be examining models of student questioning and how they can be used to help students develop both understanding and creativity. First and most basically, we need to teach students what a question is. Very young children, as all kindergarten teachers know, have trouble understanding the difference between a story and a question. Without guidance, a suggestion that young children ask questions of a visiting firefighter can result in long stories about vaguely fire-related events. Early childhood educators are accustomed to h...