One of the most important jobs teachers have is asking good questions. These questions are imperative because it is a gauge to see how much the students have retained from your lesson. We must promote a classroom environment that promotes questions and critical thinking. We must do what we can to get these questions out and improve the learning environment of the classroom.
In the video Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom" as the video there are several ways to promotes these better questions.
1. Prepare your Questions- It is important that go ahead and prepare your questions ahead of time before the lesson rather than just trying to quickly make some up during the lesson. Put time and think about the questions you want to ask before the class. Think of questions that will truly challenge what the students just learned.
2. Play with the Questions- Deploying a mild form of theatricality is a good way to help students think critically for example. Rather than just doing the by the book ask questions at the end of class there are some other ways to help the students think a little more. One being give a question at the beginning of the lesson and tell the students to think about the answer and have them give their response at the end of class. This is a good way to make the students actually think about the material and what they want to say.
3. Preserve Good Questions- This one is pretty straight forward. Save the really good questions for the end of the lesson where they will have the most impact.
In Asking Questions to Improve Learning there are some very good points further showing how we should ask questions. One that I found very true was we should not ask more than one question to the students at a time. If you flood the students with several questions all at once the students will not really focus or even worst they will be so overwhelmed the questions will be ignored all together. Also another very important point is to make sure the questions you have planned are relevant in relation to the lesson you are teaching. The questions we choose to ask is a great indicator as whether our lesson really sunk in with the students. It can not be overstated how important it is to have great questions that will help improve the learning environment of our classrooms.
Overall, your post is starting out great. I really enjoyed your intro; it was very thorough. In your second paragraph, I would say after you introduce the first video, start the sentence with "there are several ways...". I would take out the extra words, "as the video". I'd also comment to proofread a little further because there are several sentences that could use commas. Other than those two things, good post.
ReplyDeleteI like your post its very thorough. I agree with you, in order to have students really engage in class as a group we must ask good questions. For students to dig a little deeper, and become critical thinkers, its important to push their minds a beyond mediocre questions.
ReplyDelete"These questions are imperative because it is a gauge to see how much the students have retained from your lesson. " I would argue that retention is not the objective. Rather I would argue that the development of thinking, reasoning, arguing skills is the primary reason to ask questions. Yes, a check on understanding is useful to you if it improves your teaching. But the skills developed by the student are the most important outcomes.
ReplyDeleteWhat about open-ended and closed ended questions? That was a critical part of this assignment?