Questioning

I think questioning is a very important tool to assess students knowledge and to help expand their knowledge.  Using H.O.T. (higher order thinking) questions is a great way to help students make connections to other subjects or ideas.  It also helps students form critical thinking skills.  Everyone seems to agree that questioning is an excellent tool to help students learn more, and many teachers think they are asking appropriate questions.  In many cases they are not.  According to the text 70% of questions asked in the classroom are basic recall questions.  Are these questions really helping our students develop critical thinking skills?  I think not.  Teachers need to expand the small percentage of questions that require students to show and construct understanding and apply knowledge.

There are many ways that teachers can ask more authentic questions.  My quick go to when coming up with H.O.T. questions is why?  Why do we do this, why do we do that.  My mentor teacher at OG has helped me pay more attention to questioning.  The one thing we discussed that she wanted me to gain from the experience was how to ask H.O.T. questions.  She said it took her years to learn how to effectively question her students.  I also liked the quick questioning guide the book gave.  It discusses asking what you learn, summarizing student answers, asking how they know, how else, and what surprised you.  I have seen my mentor teacher use all of these types of questions, and it really gets her students thinking.  They are not able to just yell out an answer right after the question is ask.  It takes even the smartest students a few seconds to formulate an appropriate answer.  I feel that when the classroom gets quiet and everyone is obviously thinking you know you have asked a very good question.

When leaving class Tuesday you asked me to discuss the class, so here goes...  I have always hear the terms ethos, logos, and pathos, but I never knew what they meant.  That is probably because I slept through English comp.  However, I never knew they related to questioning styles; I always thought they were just about writing styles.  As far as the TED video goes.  I loved it!  I have stumbleupon.com (excellent site... you should explore it if you haven't yet!)  TED videos several times, but I never watched them, because I assumed they would be boring.  I am glad that I was able to see that they are not.