Blog Post #4

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

The driving question for this assignment is what do we need to
know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?


I love how Ben Johnson stresses how important it is to ask questions properly within the classroom in his article,The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom. He also talks about how creative teacher may accompany the "wait three seconds after a question" technique with some sort of system used to call on students randomly. This way every student has a chance to answer a question. I know that a few of my teachers when I was growing up would use systems such as pulling pieces of paper with student names out of jar or simply marking student names off on a roll sheet. This is a very effective way to get everyone engaged in answering questions.

When I started to read Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog, I liked how she described a good question: "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." She goes on to recommend three actions that teachers need to take in order to improve on asking questions.
Her first of the three recommendations is to prepare questions. Instead of just preparing the lesson by gathering information and facts, finding relations to the book, and organizing everything, be sure to create questions ahead of time. By doing this, the teacher will be able to make the questions clearer by knowing when the best time to ask each question will be within the lesson.
The second recommendation is to play with questions. This can simply mean to ask the students a question, let them have to think about, and then answer the question later. The question could be asked in the beginning of class, a slide show, lesson, etc. and the students can write it down, discuss it with other students, and/or gather more information to answer as more information on the subject is revealed to them.
The last recommendation from Weimer is to preserve good questions. An example of this is when a teacher is asked questions, he or she writes them down to remember them and then when another class comes in or years down the road the teacher can present the class with, “While you are thinking of questions to ask me and the class, let me share one that a previous student of mine in class asked about this subject.” This shows the students that the teacher cares and remembers what his or hers students have to say and ask.