Asking questions: What questions do we ask? How do we ask?
Good questions are one of the most important aspects of teaching. Not only are questions vital in order to assess learning but they are essential while implementing lessons in virtually any subject. Asking questions can frame the lesson as well as set children up for success when testing must take place. There must be opportunities daily for every single child in the classroom to share ideas and contribute to the conversations taking place during the teaching and learning process. Many times children who are shy or feel they do not have anything profound to add to the lesson will ultimately just keep quiet. This is a bad habit that must be broken. Children will disengage and become inactive observers instead of eager participants. There must be rules and procedures emplace because good conversations will not become a part of the daily routine if the proper measures have not been take to allow for it to be so. Children should be respectful, patient, thoughtful and appropriate when a teacher presents the type of question needed for investigations of the topic at hand.
What type of questions should we ask? I think the typical questions that include a yes or no answer are useful in some settings like mathematics and science; however, when teaching reading and language arts an open ended question will most likely be important. In the video titled: Asking better questions in the classroom pt. 1, Joanne Chesley reminds us about the benefits of using open ended questions, allowing the student to delve into the subject matter more completely rather than closed ended question.
Another resource I found useful was the very informative video about the way questions should be posed in the classroom. Questioning styles and strategies, demonstrates the process for effective questioning and sample student responses. Student understanding is shown and the lesson flows quite well. Student learning will be exponentially improved if we, as educators, can harness achievement through the use of effective questioning and quality answers.
Interesting. Well written.
ReplyDeleteI am a student in EDM510 assigned to comment on your blog post this week. Your post on questioning also applies to my adult learners. Unless I ask open-ended questions and use questioning techniques such as random calling, student calling, probing or clarifying, adults will also shut down and the conversation will grow stale and boring. I really enjoyed your second video link that showed questioning in action! Also, in another class, we are studying different learning styles so at the end of the video when the instructor asks us to try and guess student learning styles based on answers to a question, it really grabbed my attention. I intend to use this video as a discussion generator in our education psychology course. Thanks
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