A Weekly Relfection: 5. Asking Good Questions

Each day when we enter the classroom as teachers, we should come in with an arsenal of questions that accompany our lesson for the day.  Why do we as teachers ask questions?  Well, what would our kids learn with out them?!  Teachers ask questions to:

• Assess the level of students' comprehension. 
• Develop student interest or motivation.
• Develop thinking skills. 

We ask questions to keep our students engaged in the lesson, check for understanding and encouraged higher-level thinking.  However, not just any old question will do the trick.  It all comes down to the quality of the questions that we are asking our students.  The questions we ask will determine the level of thinking to which we take our students.

I think questioning is a perfect place to enact the "scaffolding" technique, or starting with a question and continuing to build upon in,  into our teaching styles.  As I think about developing my questioning techniques, I believe this would be an effective strategy.  For example, start by asking a question on the Knowledge level of Bloom's Taxonomy such as, "What is a GPS system?" and finally moving to Bloom's level of Evaluation and "Assess the effectiveness in increasing crop production through the use of technologies such as GPS systems."  As the lesson progresses, these questions and all of the ones in between are guiding students to make the connection between the Knowledge and Evaluation levels of learning.

As a pre-service teacher, questioning is a skills that I am continuing to develop with every lab, lesson, and class period.  But in the end, the work will be worth it.  Effective questioning is a must-have in the classroom.  Check out the video below for a great example of effective questioning in the classroom.