Blog #4

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

They are just questions, what is the big deal? I was totally wrong when I thought that after reading the question for the first time. After looking into some of the sources Dr. Strange left for us to look at, I had a totally different outlook on questions, and how to ask them. I knew there were different kind of questions like open ended and close ended questions, but after watching Asking better questions in the classroom, I learned it was all about how you wanted the student to answer the question. Did you want their answer to simply be a "yes" or a "no", or did you want them to really think about their answer and elaborate?

After reading The right way to ask questions in the classroom I learned that you should ask very specific questions. You should do this especially when you are trying see if your class really understands the subject. I took away from this article that you do not want to ask you class if they understand. Chances are that they are going to answer "yes", so you will just keep moving along. I really want my future class to understand what I am talking about. In order to make sure that my class is understanding, I want to make sure every student in my class gets the chance to answer a question. I would do this by asking everyone a question in random order.

I believe that we also need to know how to ask better questions. I got great insight from reading Three ways to ask better questions. You should really prepare your questions. Have them ready to ask before you start class. You should know exactly how you want to word them, so you are not stumbling around when trying to ask them. You should also "play around" with a question. Ask it at the beginning of class, and ask you students to just think about it while you are teaching. At the end of class get some of your students to answer it. The last thing is to preserve a good question. If one of your students ask a really good question, answer it and jot it down. Save it, and ask it later.

I believe that asking questions is very vital in someone's education. You want to make sure they are understanding you and that they are actually taking something away from your teaching. You also want to make sure that they are paying attention to you. If they cannot answer a question they are either not listening or just do not understand it. In that case you should try a different way of teaching it to help this student understand.

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