What is questioning?
At the heart of every teacher’s classroom is the concept of questioning. Most teachers want to delve deeper into the idea, but don’t always master this concept. First, we must understand not all questions end with a question mark. In a classroom questioning is any task given to a student to elicit a response either formatively or summatively. Kathleen Cotton (1988) writes that questions are instructional cues or stimuli that convey to students the content elements to be learned and directions for what they are to do and how they are to do it. For questioning to be effective, however; teachers must see the relationship between the question--cue, task, or stimuli-- and desired student outcomes. An understanding of this relationship allows the teacher to determine question types, rigor, and difficulty.To question effectively the classroom teacher must understand two important ideas about questioning: why am I questioning my students and how do I need to question my students.
Why do we question students?
Recall: Teachers often want to know what students remember about a particular concept, idea, task, or lesson. When a teacher wants to gauge prior knowledge about a concept while introducing a new unit, questioning is used. Very often the teacher needs this simple data to know what needs to be re-taught; what needs to be enriched--these are not the same pedagogically speaking-- and what students bring to the table with whatever new learning is going to take place. Another reason for teacher questioning for student recall is to tie in previous--yesterday’s learning or concepts from the week-- learning into the new learning for the day’s new learning. In both situations, we question students to gauge what needs to be reviewed to grasp new learning.
Checking Understanding: Another reason teachers question students is to check for student understanding. This check for student understanding occurs either during new learning or at the end of new learning. This moves past the modality of simply asking, “does everyone understand?” and watching no one’s hand go up or ask a question. When the check for understanding happens during instruction, the teacher needs to ensure a student understands either part of a concept, or a simpler concept to master a more complex one.This is assessing for learning. If this is a mid-point check for understanding, instruction can be adjusted so students can demonstrate mastery of that part or simpler concept. A simple check after a lesson can give a teacher simple data to drive the next day’s instruction. These checks are not long. They aren’t quizzes or assignments, rather; simple formative assessments to let the teacher know “my kids get it.” This growing trend in education is central to mastery because this allows the classroom teacher to adjust their instruction during the lesson to ensure mastery. On the back in of the lesson--assessing for mastery-- questioning for understanding gives “quality” to a grade score. Formative assessments are so crucial; they give students opportunity to take inventory of their own learning during instruction time.
Well, that's all for now...We'll get more into questioning next time!!!
Happy Teaching!!!
