How Are You Asking Your Questions?

There is no wrong question, but as an educator you can wrongly ask a question.  This week’s weekly writing focused on effective questioning.  Questioning is a crucial part of the learning process.  After material has been taught questions are asked to make sure what was conveyed by the teacher has been absorbed by the students.  As well as to interest and motivate students and create higher orders of thinking and reasoning. 

The realization of differentiated instruction in the classroom helps ease the burden of how to ask questions.  However, before you can ask questions you as an educator must understand what differentiated instruction is and how to implement it into your classroom. 

First, students must feel comfortable in your classroom for any of this to work.  Once students feel comfortable in your classroom the fear of asking a dumb question will subside.  Next no matter how off the wall a question may be at times you as an instructor must be prepared to answer it.  This may require rephrasing the question in a way that makes more sense so the whole class understands. 

Secondly, as an educator you must recognize that your students learn a multiple realm of modalities.  To reach all your students learning styles, you as an educator must have variability in your day to day lessons to connect to everyone. 

Looking ahead towards my student teaching experience there are a few things I want to hone in on and become proficient in by the end of my experience.

1.      Thoroughly articulate my questions.  After teaching material I want my students to give clear meaning to me the connection they made from today’s lesson with yesterdays and what the importance is of what we learned today for what is in store for the day ahead.

2.      Don’t jump the gun!  Allow for enough wait time for students to formulate a response.

3.      Reach for the sky!   Throughout the day to day lessons that I will be teaching I want to make sure my lessons have meaning and challenge my students just a little bit more than anticipated.  If I can do that.  My students will stay engaged and therefore ask deeper thinking questions when they arise.

4.      Create debate.  I loved it when we got to debate in high school.  Being assigned a topic and a stance or taking a side made me think outside the box and not just skim the surface.  At the same time I got to listen to other students’ perspectives and thought about why what they were saying made sense or why I took a different side.  I think debate can be a great way to further questioning.  To make it successful like stated earlier students must feel safe in the environment you provide to them.

 

Questioning is almost like the keystone of ones learning process.  As an educator you must lay the blocks so students can sufficiently question and grow their learning mindset.  And students must understand the importance of questioning and ask out when they do not understand or want to learn more.