Blog #4

The question for my blog this week is, "what do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?"

An important factor to remember while being a teacher is that, although we may think we do, we will not know all the answers! From asking questions, teachers should get the impression that their students understand the discussions going on in the classroom. In the article The Right Way to Ask Questions, a valid point has been made. While asking the question, "okay does anyone understand?", this is a way for the teacher to get any last minute questions out of the way before changing subjects or moving onto new task. The students either may be embarrassed to ask a question, or are not certain on if they understand or not. If this is the case, they will not have specific question about what was just done, therefore will not ask any questions and could be lost before the activity even begins. So, as teachers we need to stop and try to think of a different way to ask this question so we can better make sure all the students are on the same page. Maybe by asking more specific questions? Or even thinking of different strategies upon trial and error.

While reading the article "Three Ways to Ask Better Questions", the author shared the idea that "Good questions make students think, they encourage participation and I think they improve the caliber of the answers students give and the questions they ask". Following this, the 3 potential actions he shared to better improve this problem were: Prepare Questions, Play with Questions, and Preserve Good Questions. With preparing the question comes better understanding, and minimizes confusion. While preparing a lesson, the main focus is on the content, activities, and what the are wanting their students to get out of the activities. While this is normal, preparing questions that go along with the lesson can help with confusion, and if the students do not understand the question can help the teacher from being stuck on another way to rephrase their question. The idea with playing with the question, would be to not necessarily have students answer it right away, but have them think about it, and come back to it later. In this article, the author mentions that most students lose interest very fast, almost immediately after the question is answered they forget about it. With this method, they think it can get the student to either write it down in their notes, or even ponder on the question and have something to share in the discussion the next time the particular question is asked. This way they are better engaged, and will be thinking about it on their own, and they will participate in class! The third and final solution is preserving good questions, this solely comes from using the same questions(only if it is a great question) more than once, and taking note on how the answers to the same question change over time. This can also show how the students are learning, and their progress throughout the year. I think this particular article was my favorite out of all of them, and I will definitely plan to keep these ideas in mind when I reach my teaching career!