Blog Post #4

I found The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom to be very insightful. When I was in grade school, I wasn't always the student who was terrified that my name was going to be called next but in certain subjects I was a bit hesitant and nervous. When I look back on those times and reflect on what should have been, I link this article to those times because I did have teachers that called on names and expected the right answer and when the right answer wasn't said, they didn't elaborate on why it was wrong. In my future classroom, I want to be the teacher that asks questions that are effective and are easy to comprehend. There were so many truthful points in this article but the one thing that I completely agreed with was that although students didn't answer the question about understanding the concept, doesn't mean they fully comprehend what that question was entailing. An educator should not say, "if you don't ask anymore questions, I assume you know everything that you need to know." That's a broad statement and if I were a student in that classroom, I'd have a little anxiety about asking anymore questions and try to comprehend all of the material on my own. Not every child is on the same level as their classmates and the way that material is comprehended is different in many ways. Instead of assuming that every student knows the material, educators should display an approachable attitude and be willing to work with students who may not be comfortable to ask questions in class!


After reading Asking Questions to Improve Learning, I bookmarked this article for later use. It is really important to know how to ask questions to your students so they can retain information. When testing comprehension of the material, I like how the article pointed out that you should acknowledge the student's answer whether it was right or wrong. When acknowledging a wrong answer, it should be followed with a, "nice try but let's talk about the right way..." or something of that nature. I think the best point made in this article was that questions should stick to the curriculum and not jump outside of what's been learned because that can cause confusion and modeling questions for the exact lessons is key. Learning about the different kinds of questions is crucial because not all subjects can ask the same model of questions. Another point made was to not interrupt a student's answer because although you, as the educator, know why the answer is right or wrong, letting the student answer the question in full could let you gain insight and let his/her classmates learn from their answer because that child's answer could be another child's ticket to understanding/comprehending the material being taught! I believe that open-ended questions are central to a child's comprehension because when a student can support their answer with sufficient material, it's known that the student understands what's being taught.

After viewing Asking Better Questions in the Classroom, it just reiterated what I previously read in the assigned articles. When asking a question as the teacher to the class, you have to be specific about what you want from the student and do not display any type of angst because you get what you ask for. For information retention, close-ended questions are ideal and for information comprehension, open-ended questions are ideal (in my opinion)! Although I am not an educator yet, I know that all of this information will be resourceful when it comes to writing questions for my classes.

The Right Question Institute's website is a tool that can be utilized when critical-thinking skills need to be further developed. After reading reviews about this tool, I can see that not only do students improve their ability when it comes to critical-thinking skills, but teachers learn how to develop these questions needed to deepen a student's ability to comprehend such questions.


What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?
After viewing each of these articles and videos, I think that a crucial element is being able to model questions after a curriculum. When composing questions, we need to be able to reach the students on every level so we can see how information is being retained and what areas we need to work on. Also, we need to know how the information is being comprehended so when it comes to open-ended questions, we can rest assure that our students understand the material so that can be displayed when a test is given. Specificity is another key element because if we're not specific, we can't expect students to read in-between the lines and give the exact answer we're looking for. There are many things that need to be known when it comes to asking questions but these are just a few crucial items that I picked up from the information read!