Blog post #6

After reading the article The Right Way To Ask Questions by Ben Johnson, I learned some great material on asking questions. Ben explains that Teachers often ask, “Does everybody understand?” and he explains that it is a useless question and I definitely agree with him. So many kids ignore this question because it is asked so often or they are scared to speak up. It is a good idea to ask kids randomly in the class specific questions so you know if they understand or not.

Asking Questions To Improve Learning really helped me with the question of “What questions do we ask?” I learned a couple different types of questions and how to properly ask them. The questions that I learned about are open questions, closed questions, and managerial questions. Open questions are questions that are good for discussion and active learning because they bring about multiple or conflicting answers. Closed questions are good at testing comprehension and showing if a student has retained the information well because they have only a limited amount of correct answers. Managerial questions are used to make sure the students have the needed materials and are understanding.

Three Ways To Ask Better Questions In The Classroom written by Maryellen Weimer. She explains that there are three things you must do in order to ask better questions. The first thing is to prepare the questions. By preparing questions before hand the teacher is more organized and minimizes the risk of asking confusing questions. The second thing is you must play with the questions. She says that questions are most powerful when they best engage students. The third thing is as a teacher you should preserve good questions. Maryellen says that good questions can be reused and even altered to make better questions. After reading these articles I feel I have taken in some great advice for my future classroom.