Blog Post #4

Everyone who has ever sat through a long lecture or video in the classroom has anticipated the "dreaded" question and answer period. Until reading, watching videos and discussing other researched material for the blog this week, I didn't know there was so much to consider when asking a question. This becomes a more relevant topic when considering the question, "What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?" As a future educator, I would like to be effective in the questions that I ask my students because I want them to be able to have a substantive and informative discussion. The only way to accomplish that is by using the techniques that I learned from everything this week and begin to understand how I can actively engage those students. Teachers have an

obligation to get the most out of their students, so knowing the vast importance of refraining from asking a close-ended question versus an open-ended question makes quite a difference in how rich the students' answers will be. The research done by Ben Johnson, and discussed in The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom, is significant because he points out the first thing to do when asking a question is to consider what will be the goal of the questions we will ask the students. From his observations, he points out how students can be totally left out of the discussion for long periods of time, simply by the teacher not asking good questions. This shows how important the many different techniques of asking questions the right way impacts the whole classroom, so simply following good question techniques by Johnson, the question pioneer Mary Budd Rowe and others can get us on our way to become more aware of the correct way to ask questions.

The way a teacher asks questions hinges on his/her awareness that there is an abundance of techniques as far as asking questions is concerned. I learned a lot from the video Questioning Styles and Strategies, which discusses such excellent strategies like Think,Pair, Share in which students are not expecting to be singled out, but collaboratively arrive at answers to the questions they

are asked. Students' participation was phenomenal and I could tell it would be a technique I would use. I also liked the interpersonal questioning style, because each student is asked to write down, in a learning log, what their own response will be to the question. This gives each student something to write about the topical question in their own words, so they are all expecting to be called on. Other techniques like that one should be the "gold standard" for anyone calling themselves a teacher, because the knowledge, research and application of asking questions that collectively empower the students' creative minds should always be uppermost in an educator's mind.

Through my own research I found a great lecture video by Bill McComas, titled Asking Effective Questions, and even though it is over an hour long, it was worth every minute of watching it. In particular, for research purposes, the video helped me realize that the same techniques for asking substantive questions go by slightly different terminologies, but equate to the teacher caring about how he/she influences the education of his/her students. Learning that over 98% of questions appeal to the cognitive domain(versus the affective domain and psychomotor domain, see also Domains of Learning)of our senses gave me a basis to study in more detail what types of questions I should be asking my future students. Though off subject a little, I have included the video, Bloom's Taxonomy and the Cognitive Domain, because understanding what the cognitive domain is and why it has such great importance with asking the right questions will help you formulate a successful strategy for asking the right questions. I am now encouraged to view asking questions as a science, of sorts, which will lead me to more research and further understanding the value of effectively asking questions as a future teacher. After all, is it more important to ask the right questions, or more important to ask questions that fuel a young mind to be challenged by the questions we ask them? Whatever your answer will be is tantamount to the kind of teacher (or clarifying communicator) you want to be. I hope you choose well.



Sources: Kenneth Tobin, Whitney Museum of American Art, Abby Chan, Bill McComas, Ben Johnson, Stanford News Service.