Sunday, February 9, 2014

What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?

Ben Johnson is the author of The Right Way to Ask A Question. He writes in this article about asking questions. Johnson says,"We present ourselves to be the ones with all the answers". When in fact teachers do not know everything. They will go through a lesson and then in turn ask the students questions about what they have just talked about. Why do teachers do this? They use this method as a learning strategy to make sure their students are comprehending, and listening to what they are teaching them. Everyone might not be learning what the teacher is teaching by this method. Johnson says,"Does Everybody Understand"? I have been in this situation. Some students feel embarrassed for some reason to ask a teacher questions if they need help for any reason. Johnson suggest to call on the students randomly to answer the questions. Using this technique will have all the students brains focusing.

In the article,Three Ways to Ask Better Questions In the Classroom, by Maryellen Weimer, There are Three ways to ask better questions. "Prepare the questions" the author explains that it is a lot better to prepare for class when you write down your questions before giving a lesson."Play with questions",says Weimer. After asking a question if some students do not understand move on to something else to get their brains jogging, and to help them better answer the question. The author also suggest saving good questions for other times. If a student has a really good question or even a teacher write it down and save it for when you may need it for another class. We need to understand as aspiring teachers that questions are the key ingredients to project based learning. We need to make our students understand how important it is to ask questions so they will be better prepared for their future as well.
picture of a chalk board that says questions
I got this image from here

2 comments:

  1. "Johnson says,"Does Everybody Understand"?" Does Johnson advocate this kind of question? You are unclear. What is the value (if any) of such a question?

    Questions are the central focus of project/problem/challenge based learning.

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  2. The whole point of project-based learning is to get students to gain and retain as much knowledge as they can so that they can be better prepared for their future. So you are right in that students asking questions is very important in project-based learning!

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