Feedback: Using Questions

We all know that true learning comes from asking questions. Socrates taught us this long ago. Hence the Socratic Seminar. Well, this past summer, during my Summer Writing Club, I tried something new. As we read our writing aloud, the only feedback I allowed was questions. We needed to listen closely enough and actively enough to ask relevant questions about the stories the others wrote. The result was incredible.

Now, my Writing Club is made of students who want to write. They love to write. They come to me on purpose, not just because their schedule says, “English, Tischhauser, Period 2”. So, they are an engaged group to start. Even so, limiting feedback to questions intensified this engagement. The feedback became a full-blown discussion, with people—not the writers—suggesting answers to the questions. A few times, students almost seemed as though they were creating a new piece of writing because of the questions they asked those who read aloud…but I’m getting ahead of myself.

After our first attempt at a piece of writing, using one of our warm-ups (See Shoes and Boxes and Peanuts and Keys), I read what I had written to the group to kick things off. I had shown the kids this object.

Then I asked these questions:

Who would use this thing?

What would they use it for?

What is this person doing?

I put on some soft instrumental music and set a timer. As always, I wrote with them. When the timer went off after five minutes, everyone wanted more time. So, we took another three minutes. Then, because it was the first day we were together, I volunteered to read my very rough idea to them.

Here is what I wrote:

He pushed away the weeds and the overgrown plants. A few stray branches hit him in the face, in the neck. Behind this growth was an opening—and a stairway going down. Far down. There were two landings visible from the opening and darkness beyond.

“What is this?” he wondered aloud.

The first fifteen-twenty steps were easy, but then, the darkness was suffocating.

Once finished, I asked, “Do you have any questions?” There was barely a beat of silence when someone asked, “When is this taking place?” Followed by, “What is he going to find down there?” Then, because most of the kids attended on Zoom, there was a difficult-to-understand talking-over-each-other moment when at least three kids tried to ask questions at the same time. They wanted to know if the boy would go down the stairs alone. They wanted to know his name. We talked about this for a while, me explaining that I had a name in mind, but I “didn’t know him well enough yet to name him”. They wanted to know who was down there; they all assumed there were people or beings down there. They wanted to know why he even looked behind the weeds. They wanted to know about the “pipe-thingy”.

I couldn’t write their questions fast enough. I could answer some of their questions, or at least think about them out loud. I wasn’t sure of the answers to all of their questions. It was amazing. Because of their questions, the story developed into something much bigger than I anticipated. Other members of my Writing Club decided to take some of the things that came up in our question session and use them in their own writing. They benefited from my feedback!

The same thing happened to everyone who volunteered to read their work aloud. It was a near-frenzy of questioning. And each question led to more questions. And those questions caused speculation and wondering. And that speculation and wondering caused more writing to occur. It was better than I anticipated.

I will do this again, and often. Questions provided us all with so much more than the usual, “I like your first sentence,” or “Your character’s name really fits her,” or “He found a dog! Cool!” or “You had a lot of good description.” Sigh! Questions made us think further and deeper. Questions made us begin writing more in our heads, and then in our notebooks. My Writing Club members’ questions caused me to write far into the evening after they left at the end of our session. Questions were feedback worth something!