In this week’s assignment, I viewed two different sources to try to figure out what questions we should ask as future educators and how we should ask them. I learned that there are a couple of different questions you can ask students and there are different ways you can ask them.
In the first source I viewed, Asking better questions in the classroom, was a video that told of two different ways you could ask students questions. First, you could ask a student a close-ended question, which will give you a quick “yes” or “no” from the students. This type of question is not the kind of question you want to ask students if you are trying to get their opinion on a subject. Teachers often make the mistake of asking close-ended questions, and expect children to elaborate more. What question they should have asked is an open-ended question. Open-ended questions leave the students room to think and form opinions on the question you are asking.
An example of a close-ended question is, “Do you think the weather outside is pretty?” Well, all a student has to do is say “yes” and technically, they have answered your question. An example of an open-ended question is, “What do you think about the weather outside?” This way the student has to think and then elaborate on their response, in order to get their thoughts across to you. Open-ended questions also leave room for discussions and debates.
The second source I viewed was the article, Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom. The article said, “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.” This powerful statement shows questions are more important than the answers. Questions make the students see the big picture and help them form opinions for themselves and not just agree with what the other students are saying.
Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom, gives people three way to help improve the questions one should ask in the classroom. The first way is to prepare the questions before class, instead of asking questions that randomly come into your head in the middle of the lesson. If you prepare questions ahead of time, you will avoid asking unclear questions that confuse the students.
The second way to improve your questions is to play with the questions. This means, ask a question and then leave it unanswered until close to the end of the lesson. If you ask a question and then immediately answer it, the student will not maul over the question. They will hear the answer and then forget the question, and that does not give them time to form their own opinion.
The third, and final, way to help improve your questions is to preserve good questions. If a student asks a really good question, keep it and use it in another class. You should also take notes on how students respond to your questions, whether they respond well or not. If they respond well, keep the question and if they do not respond at all, think about how you can rephrase the question to make it clearer.
Questions come in all shapes and sizes and a teacher should remember that the questions you ask can either improve a student’s mind or leave them with nothing to think over!
