Blog Post #4

What do we ask? How do we ask?

Nothing is more frustrating to a teacher than the tedious task of pulling teeth trying to get an answer out of their class. As well, nothing is more annoying than a student getting called on to answer "pointless" questions. Then it becomes a game of "don't make eye contact and I might not get called on" between the teacher and their students. However, this does not have to be the case.

Finding the right questions will ignite a fruitful discussion that will explode into a productive project based lesson that will benefit both teacher and student. The best part is that there are ways for teachers to gain new ideas to improve their classroom discussion. Edutopia has a series of effective questions to utilize in the classroom. These questions can range from elementary level to the highly advanced. Sometimes asking how, what, and why are great ways of kick-starting an open-ended discussion.

As well, in order to give an effective lesson the teacher must be effective with their delivery of their lesson and when asking questions.The next thing that needs to be addressed is How a teacher must go about asking questions. This reverts back to not asking "yes" or "no" response questions. Asking open ended questions will be the best route to take. This way students will have to think more critically and quite possibly do some research in order to find the answer. Here the teacher-through proper question asking-has created a project based learning environment. In turn, this allows all students the chance to figure it out whereas otherwise some students who did not quite get the discussion would've let those that did take the limelight and would not fully get the lesson. Asking questions properly gives all students the opportunity to fully tune in and engage with the lesson and helps improve overall understanding.