How to Ask Better Questions Than Your Child's Teacher.

A caveat right away: this isn't about teachers asking questions badly. Quite the opposite – when you have a whole class of children in front of you, a curriculum, and tests, there's almost no other way. It's just that you, the parent, have what a teacher lacks by the very design of the job: your own child, no grade, genuine curiosity, and all the time in the world. Those advantages are what turn an ordinary conversation into thinking practice. Below are six moves for using them.

In short: why a parent has the edge

It's not that you're "smarter" than the teacher – it's the setup. In class, a question is almost always a "test": it has one right answer the teacher already knows, and the child has to guess it. At home you can ask a real question – one you don't know the answer to yourself – with no grade, one-to-one, and wait as long as you need. A real question, the silence after it, and interest in how the child thinks – that's what grows thinking.

What gets in the way in class (and why it isn't the teacher's fault)

Classroom talk usually runs on a "question – answer – evaluation" loop: the teacher asks what they know, the child answers, the teacher says "right / wrong" (Mehan, 1979, described this). Genuinely open questions, where what's interesting is the child's line of thought, are rare in the average classroom (Nystrand, 1997). And one more detail: after a question, a teacher waits on average less than a second (Rowe, 1974). You can't think deeply in a second – only the one who already knew has time to answer.

And closed questions do real good, too: they check understanding across the whole class at once, and answering from memory itself strengthens retention – the "testing effect" (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006). So none of this is about "bad teachers" – it's about a whole class of children and limited time. At home those constraints are gone.

Move 1: the pause (three seconds of silence)

The simplest and most powerful. Mary Budd Rowe showed that if you wait not one but three or more seconds after a question, answers become longer and better reasoned, more children respond, guesses and reasoning appear, and children start asking questions themselves. You don't have to say anything – just silently count to three. The silence works for you.

Move 2: an open question instead of a closed one

A closed question has one answer ("yes/no," "how many?"). An open one invites thinking.

Closed	Open
"Did you like school today?"	"What was the most interesting thing today?"
"Is that the right answer?"	"How else could it have been solved?"
"Did you do your homework?"	"What was the hardest part – and how did you handle it?"
"Who's the main character?"	"Why do you think he acted that way?"

Move 3: a real question you don't know the answer to

Children instantly sense the difference between "I'm being tested" and "you're genuinely interested." Ask something with no single right answer: "What would happen if…?", "Why do you think that is?", "What would you have done?" When there's no right answer, the fear of being wrong disappears – and thinking switches on.

Move 4: "why do you think so?"

Any answer a child gives is a door, not a finish line. Don't evaluate ("good job / wrong") – go deeper: "why did you decide that?", "how can you tell?", "what led you to that idea?" That's how a child learns not to produce an answer but to justify it.

Move 5: "higher" questions, not just "what"

Questions come at different levels (in Bloom's taxonomy). "What" and "who" are memory. Thinking is grown by "how else," "what if," "do you agree," "how is this connected to…" Not "name the capital," but "why do you think capitals are so often by a river?"

Move 6: don't rush to correct

A wrong answer is data, not a verdict. Instead of "no, that's wrong," say: "interesting – how did you get there?" That way you see the child's line of thought (and often the logic in a "wrong" answer), and they don't unlearn taking risks and making guesses.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to be an expert to ask good questions? No. On the contrary: the best questions are the ones you don't know the answer to. It takes not authority but genuine curiosity.

Is a good question a hard question? No. "How else?" and "but why?" are simple, yet they open up thinking more than clever-sounding phrasing.

What if the child stays silent? Give it a pause (those three seconds), don't push. If needed, rephrase more simply or offer two options to choose from. Silence often means "thinking," not "don't know."

What if they answer "I don't know"? Ask: "but if you did know – what would you say?" or "let's guess together." That removes the fear and starts the thinking.

What if a teenager snaps "leave me alone" and walks off? Don't badger them with questions. Later, ask an easier one – on a topic they care about. Tomorrow, another. Just take a genuine interest now and then, without pressure. Within a week or two they'll almost certainly share what they're thinking on their own.

How Wings helps

Wings essentially hands you ready-made good questions. Every day, one short open task or question for the child (ages 2–14), with no single right answer, matched to their age. You don't have to invent the wording or worry that you'll "ask it wrong": we grade not correctness but the quality of reasoning. Five minutes – and you're already asking the questions that grow thinking. Try it free →

Sources

• Rowe, M. B. (1974). "Wait-Time and Rewards as Instructional Variables…" Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 11(2), 81–94 (original data); Rowe, M. B. (1986). "Wait Time: Slowing Down May Be A Way of Speeding Up." Journal of Teacher Education, 37(1), 43–50. (Teachers wait under 1 sec; a pause of about three seconds markedly improves answers.)
• Mehan, H. (1979). Learning Lessons: Social Organization in the Classroom. (The "question – answer – evaluation" pattern.)
• Nystrand, M., et al. (1997). Opening Dialogue. (Genuinely open questions are rare in class; dialogue is linked to achievement.)
• Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). "Test-Enhanced Learning." Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. (Answering from memory strengthens retention – the value of closed questions.)
• Education Endowment Foundation (Jay, T., et al., 2017). Dialogic Teaching: Evaluation Report (programme by R. Alexander). (About +2 months' progress in English and science, +1 month in maths; moderate confidence.)
• Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (2001). A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing (question levels, after Bloom).
• Bloom, B. S. (1984). "The 2 Sigma Problem." Educational Researcher. (The power of one-to-one instruction.)

Last updated: July 2026.

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