User talk:Balderas12

Science: An Elementary Teacher's Guide/Questioning
Contents
 * 1) What is questioning? How can students understand it better?
 * 2)  Wait Time
 * 3)  Predirecting questions and redirecting questions
 * 4)  Student input
 * 5)  Parroting
 * 6)  A supportive classroom
 * 7)  Closed (lower order) questions
 * 8)  Open (higher order) questions
 * 9)  Blooms Taxonomy
 * 10)  Self evaluation

What is Questioning and how can students understand it better? Questioning skills is a vital part of teaching on the professors part and on the students part. Questioning skills are essential to good teaching and learning whats right from wrong. Teachers often use questioning techniques to ensure that the students are attentive, engaged, and assess the students understanding. The question itself matters. To make sure that the students are attentive, the teachers could ask the students "Are you listening?" or "Are you following me?" Teachers spend most of their instructional time asking questions but is this really effective for student achievement? Effective use of questioning can motivate many types of responses and levels of thought by the students. Questions that focus on students attention are important elements of a lesson to help them better comprehend it. The teachers questions can influence the students participation by the number of students who get involved and even the classroom management. Effective questioning skills will require time, patience, and effort for the teacher to master in his/her classroom. Some examples that teachers ask questions is to involve students in a lesson, increase interest, check on completion of work, review previous lessons, motivate independent learning, assess goals or achievements, and develop critical thinking skills.

Wait Time: Wait time is defined as the amount of time a teacher allows to elapse after the teacher has posed a question. The wait time is 3 to 5 seconds before and after accepting the students response. The wait time provides thinking time for the students and allows the students to listen carefully. The teacher should wait an additional 3 to 5 seconds after the students response. Allowing wait time after the students response or question produces significant changes in classroom management. With increased wait time the following was increased: length of student responses, student confidence, student listening and responding, questions asked by students, and students becoming less shy.

Predirecting and Redirecting questions:  Predirecting questions is not a good idea when questioning your students. The students will tend to zone out, not listen, and become too stressed. Redirecting questions can be asked and may not have a definitive answer. The teachers response to the students answers is important as the questioned asked. A response may redirect the students when an incorrect answer is given or the students misinterpret the question that was asked. When the student responses to a question, the teacher can ask another student to comment on his or her statement. With this technique, more student participation will occur. Also, this skill can be used to allow the student to correct another students incorrect answer or statement or respond to another students question.

Student Input: Dealing with student input allows the teachers response to motivate the students input in the classroom. The teacher should never put down a students response and shouldn't allow other students to belittle other students. If this behavior continues to happen in the classroom embarrassments will prevent other students from speaking up and participating in any lessons given in the classroom. The classroom should be a safe place to express all thoughts and ideas without hurting the students feelings and making them feel comfortable in the classroom. With that in mind, the teacher will not ignore any incorrect or inappropriate responses but will simply encourage the students to rethink about their ideas and have them achieve in the classroom.

Parroting: A teacher should not repeat the students answers but will have the student repeat the answer instead. This technique will promote communication skills and attentive listening. If the teacher accidentally repeats the answer or responds to the students question it may cause embarrassment to the other students. The teacher should ask the question by saying "Is this what you meant?" and not by saying "Oh you mean?" It is important not to do this in your classroom.

Prompting and a supportive classroom: The teacher should give the student a reward for attempting to answer a question. But the teacher shouldn't do this too much because the students attention might wander away thinking what kind of reward they would get next. If the students are still struggling to answer a question add in some thoughts like "What about," "What do you think about," and "Interesting observation, but what about?" To establish a good and supportive classroom atmosphere the classroom should be a place to learn and express all ideas with no fear of humiliation. The students should feel safe, comfortable, confident, and be able to achieve all goals in the classroom. It is okay to be wrong in the classroom when answering questions because no one is perfect thats why the students and even the teacher are in the classroom to learn from their mistakes.

Closed (lower order) questions: Closed questions is only a one correct answer. These questions does not encourage much thought to the students because they expect to say more answers and not just one.

Open (higher order) questions: Open questions is a lot more different then the closed questions. Open questions result in a more divergent thinking skill than those who simply memorize the facts. Open questions require opinion, judgement, explanation, requiring critical thinking skills and not just recalling simple facts. Teachers should ask more open questions than closed questions.

Blooms Taxonomy: The teacher should practice and help the students practice each learning skill by asking appropriate questions. Blooms Taxonomy comes with 6 basic skills to help students understand the question better.
 * Knowledge (Memory)- recall data or information
 * Comprehension- understand the meaning
 * Application- use a concept in a new situation
 * Analysis- separate concepts into parts; distinguish between the facts and interferences
 * Synthesis- combine parts to form a new meaning
 * Evaluation- make judgments about the value of ideas and thoughts

Self Evaluation: The teacher should self evaluate on how they did in the classroom. The teacher should examine any kind of feedback, ask a colleague to observe the lesson, and seek out resources to improve questioning skills in the classroom. Two ways the teacher can evaluate themselves is to:
 * Video tape
 * Audio tape

--Balderas12 (discuss • contribs) 06:22, 30 June 2016 (UTC)balderas12- Summer I/Science/Kevin Young