Blog Post #4

Asking Questions: What questions do we ask? How do we ask?

What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?

After reading The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom I think Ben, the author, is spot on about questions being more for the teacher then the student. I can't tell you how many times I have heard teachers ask the question "Does everybody understand?" or "Are their any questions?". This is so generic that it really is not helping students. Sometimes student don't know the right questions to ask or he or she doesn't want to be embarrassed by asking a dumb question. I think it would be more beneficial if teachers asked questions with specific answers. That way teachers will know if students really know what is being discussed.

After reading Asking Questions to Improve Learning I learned some pointers about what kinds of questions to ask and what to follow up with to students answers. For example if a teacher asks a yes or no question ask the students to explain why he or she said yes or no. I thought a good technique to responding to a students answer was respond in a way that will keep the students thinking. I think it is good if a teacher makes a student second guess his or her answer because it will make a student more confident if they know he or she is right whereas a student who is not sure may just have guessed and was hoping to get it right.

After reading some of the sources shared with me about questions I have learned that there is a lot more to questions than meets the eye. There are many different types of questions. On the website The Second Principle it tells us about the five types of questions which are factual, convergent, divergent, evaluative, and combinations. I have also learned that we need to prepare questions and take note of good questions asked and use those in future lesson plans. It just goes to show you how little things like asking the right questions can make a difference for the students.