This week I had the opportunity to read a couple articles about how we as teachers can ask appropriate questions that maximize our students' learning abilities. At first this topic made me think, "are questions really that big of a deal?"; however, I found that questions are a huge part of every lesson and can improve students' comprehension of content. It's our job to effectively create, clarify and respond to questions in our classroom in ways that build critical thinking skills.
In my AEE 412 class we have been talking about Bloom's Taxonomy and how we can write effective learning objectives accordingly. My mind has slowly but surely been grasping this concept of how to write appropriate objectives. One question that came to mind while learning about Bloom's Taxonomy was, "does this concept only apply to only writing objectives?" After reading this week's articles I was able to answer my question.
The answer to this question is "NO." James E. Dyer explains that questions are categorized into two different levels: lower- level and higher-level. The lower-level questions pertain to the "lower-levels" in Bloom's Taxonomy and higher-level questions align with the "higher-levels" in Bloom's Taxonomy. At least this is how I went about understanding and remembering this concept. This is all beginning to unravel for the more I learn about Bloom's Taxonomy. I am realizing that these levels of cognitive thinking can be and should be applied throughout your entire lesson. These components should be aligned in order to aid students to a successful end result of higher order critical thinking.
I also realized that there is a lot of preparation when crafting the appropriate questions. Not only should questions be aligned with the level of learning that your students are on, but teachers also need to be prepared to respond to students. Teachers may need to clarify a question if students do not understand what you are asking. Students might ask you a question in return that you don't know the answer to. In these cases, how are you going to respond? I realized after reading these articles that teachers need to be prepared for any situation that might come about. We ask questions to engage students, however, we must then be prepared to facilitate them and appropriately respond to them.
As student teaching is approaching, I often fear that my students are going to ask me questions that I will not have the answer too. Immediately I worry that if this happens my students wont think highly of me and rather not take my teaching seriously. Although a fear of mine, I have been thinking of ways that I can work with these situations. First of all, the article I read for this week reassured me that it is impossible for teachers to know the answer to every single question that their students ask. Phew! Secondly, the article had some solutions for these scenarios. One was to direct the question to the rest of the class and see if any other students know the answer. I thought this was clever. I also thought that with technology being a booming business for kids these days, why not allow them to utilize their cell phones or other devices to quickly research their question and share it with the rest of the class. I wouldn't want to over use this strategy but in some cases it might prove beneficial. Overall, I think that it's important for teachers to be quick on their feet in responding to students and the best way to do that is to be prepared. I hope to have these tools that I learn about and gain ready to pull out of my toolbox and use as part of my classroom management strategies.
Below is a link to an article that comes from Harvard on this topic of questioning. They propose an interesting technique to utilizing questioning in the classroom. They suggest encouraging students to formulate their own questions. Click the link below and check out this new technique that allows students to develop critical thinking skills!
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