I think of questioning as the connecting force during instruction. You can ask questions to begin a lesson, to transition a lesson from section to section and to either initiate closure of the lesson or preview lesson content for next time. Specifically, questioning serves at least three purposes during instruction. Using wait-time during questioning or prompting for further input can increase engagement of students who aren’t always the first to raise their hands to respond. Questioning can be used to check understanding. If I use a word during instruction or a word comes up in the content, I can use questioning to check for prior knowledge, but also to make sure the students are on the same page in order to advance the lesson. Finally, questioning can be used as a tool to think more critically about an activity, topic or discussion. I can use questions in my classroom to extend my lesson by feeding off of student comments.
This fall, I have discovered the usefulness in questioning while helping students to figure something out. We have done several poetic activities to begin the year and as fourth graders, they often struggle with what to write-especially if it is about them or their lives. We recently did a project in which they wrote about idioms their family uses and had to do a four line poem with at least two rhyming verses to complete the activity. Some students had such a difficult time with it. I started asking questions to them to give them ideas when I realized that is how I started writing my own idiom rhyme. What does this idiom really mean? How do you feel when someone says this? What do you do when someone says this? When they would hit on a word that was easy to rhyme with, I would then prompt them for words that rhyme with it, etc. So, questioning has helped me to be successful in guiding rather than telling my students.
I would like to improve my responses to student questioning. When I use questioning to extend a lesson, my students can sometimes get taken off track or deeper than I expect and I often find myself in territory I can’t always respond to confidently. I need to improve my reactions to questions I don’t know the answer to without disappointing my students. In addition, I find questioning difficult when my students are tired and I need it to work in order to properly introduce a lesson and only two or three of the same people are raising their hands to answer the question. I need to think about rephrasing my questions on my toes or working to engage my students more with my questions. I am also not a fan of cold-calling on students to get other responses, but I will do it to bring some of my students back to reality-especially in math when the answer is simple.
It was my first day teaching full-time today. What was I so worried about? Nothing horrible happened. It was just a normal, unpredictable day at school. The one thing I forget to think about while planning my days is that I do have time to think. When my students are working independently, I can work too. They still know I am available to answer their questions, but I can take the time to tidy-up my desk or the room and to get myself organized for the next subject or hook up my computer to the projector. I can also take the time to simply sit down and watch the kids work and take a good chug of water. Even if it is only a minute or even 30 seconds, it is so utterly satisfying. The kids are working away, I feel confident and prepared and every once and a while, one of them will glance up at me and I can smile at them. And man, does it feel good when they smile back!
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When thinking about questioning in my last post, I didn't consider the responses I had to make during the questioning process. I like to get the answers from the students most of the time, but once in a while, a bright student asks an advanced question. If this comes up, I better be ready with an answer.
ReplyDeleteThis actually happened in Science on Wednesday. I made sure to include higher-level questions in this lesson since I hadn't been focusing on this as much as I wished. The class is studying the states of matter. Earlier in the unit, a student mentioned that plasma is a state of matter. I said that didn't seem right. Then I researched some and found out he was correct. I was only familiar with the three states of matter, but now there are five. I had to correct my comment from earlier. Then when we started talking about how particles move, he asked how they moved in plasma? I was slightly prepared because I had read up a little on the energy in each type of state, but I couldn't have done justice to this question. I told him it was its own category, and the particles moved very fast. To close this question and move to another topic, I told him this would be a great topic for him to research. He was way above the rest of the forth graders. The rest of the students were still trying to grasp the fact that ice is a solid and water is a liquid. We obviously have different level of scientists in each classroom.
As for full time teaching, it is a lot, but I felt ready after going through the process slowly. The first fulltime day, I didn't feel nervous, but Ms. R stayed hidden in the back of the room. I don't think she said one thing to the students all day. Then on day two it was just I in the room. So far the experience has been a good one.
Good luck with your full week next week.
Hi Joanna,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your careful thinking about questioning. It's important to take time to figure out WHY people make such a big deal about the role of questioning in learning, particularly if you didn't benefit from effective questioners in your own education.
For me, questioning is a way to keep me honest, especially when I'm using questioning to promote critical thinking. You and Rose have both seen me ask you to think about asking students WHY you're studying a particular concept, idea or set of facts. In my teaching, if I'm comfortable asking this question, it means I'm confident that I have an answer that justifies what we're doing.
In fact, I don't need to always ask the question out loud, I just need to know in my head that I COULD answer it if I was asked. Sometimes we refer to this idea of knowing "why we're doing this" as intentionality. A book I often recommend is called Teaching with Intention by Debbie Miller and the whole idea in the book is that effective teachers can always explain why it is she's doing what she's doing (and how she's doing it). For me, active, substantive questions contribute to intentional teaching.
I agree that becoming a skillful questioner takes time and mindfulness--it's developmental, too. As a teacher gets more confident about the content of her teaching, opportunities for questioning become more apparent. I think you'll find this in your next placement when you get to teach the same class 4 times in one day!