Blog Post #4

What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?

There's this urban myth that teachers know everything. When in reality, teachers don't always have the answers or even the right questions. I read an article by Ben Johnson titled, The Right Way to Ask Questions in a Classroom. In this article, Mr. Johnson discussed how teachers ask questions pertaining to students understanding things. The main question he said they ask is "Does everybody understand?" According to Mr. Johnson, this is probably one of the most pointless questions ever. In general, students are really thinking that question means, yes you understand everything and if you don't, speak or forever hold your peace. Most kids think that way, and they then become either shy or too ashamed to ask what exactly they don't understand. Then, what does the teacher usually do? She moves right along to the next lesson. So how does Mr. Johnson think teachers should approach this situation differently? His more effective approach to asking students questions insists of instead of asking the whole class as a whole about if they understand things, randomly ask students throughout the classroom. Call a student's name, pause for a few seconds giving them time to think, and then ask a question related to the lesson, This way teachers can see what students are engaged, and it makes it a little more easier to see what certain students aren't quite understanding. Here is a link to the article, check it out. http://www.edutopia.org/blog/asking-better-questions-deeper-learning-ben-johnson


I also read an article that I looked up titled, Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions, by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana of Harvard University. It is a very insightful article as well. It talks about the Question Formulation Technique or QFT. This method focuses on helping students learn to ask their own questions. This method also teaches the students how to improve their questions and use them strategically. QFT can be used for all ages, and challenge students to think beyond. Students can learn how to research and analyze things on their own. According to Dan and Luz, there are 6 key steps to QFT.

Step 1- Teachers design a question focus
Step 2- Students produce questions
Step 3- Students improve their questions
Step 4- Students prioritize their questions
Step 5- Students and teachers decide on next steps
Step 6- Students reflect on what they have learned

Here is a link for more details about QFT http://hepg.org/hel-home/issues/27_5/helarticle/teaching-students-to-ask-their-own-questions_507


After reading these 2 articles and doing a little research, I go back to the question I began this post with. What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher? First, we need to have a plan on asking quality questions that will show understanding by both the teacher and student. Next, we need to make sure we understand that students aren't always going to understand what we are teaching, so we need to make the effort to notice those who aren't. Lastly, we need to have a platform where students are more confident in asking us something when they don't understand things. I really like the idea of the Question Formulation Technique for me as a future educator. Students asking questions is just as important as educators asking questions. More interaction between teacher/students in regards to asking questions is not only easier for the teacher to know the student is understanding things, but it also makes the student feel great about the questions they ask and answers they give as well.