Questioning Strategies in the Classroom

Why ask questions?  Questioning is a means of assessing students' understanding of a topic, concept or process. True assessment, however, is found in the type of question asked.  As the chapter discusses, too often students are thrown facts that they are expected to spit back out at the teacher when asked a question.  The chapter calls this "guess what's in the teacher's brain."  These types of questions are usually literal comprehension questions and usually require little thought from the student.  A majority of classrooms use the IRE questioning cycle.  "A classroom where IRE is the dominant form of discourse quickly becomes a passive learning environment dependent on the teacher for any kind of discussion." (pg 81)  So, what kind of questions should we ask? Higher-order questions produce the best results; they are, however, more work for the teacher.  Higher-order questions really get students thinking and, when used correctly, can get students motivated too. Using Bloom's taxonomy is one of the best ways to develop higher-order questions.

Should the teacher do all the questioning?  No.  Let the students ask questions too.  When a balance is maintained between asking and answering questions, students are given more responsibility to think critically.  But before our students can ask good questions, they must be taught questioning strategies.  Questioning strategies such as Questioning the Author, ReQuest, and Question-Answer Relationships all teach students how to develop thoughtful questions.  Students can also use these strategies to question the text or themselves when reading.

My experiences with questioning:  I was not shocked to read that most teachers ask mostly literal questions.  During our tutoring sessions for CIR 412, students read passages from a comprehensive reading inventory and answer questions.  There are a variety of comprehension questions ranging from literal, inferential, and evaluative.  Students usually do well on the literal questions but struggle with inferential and evaluative questions mainly because they are rarely exposed to these higher-order questions.  I also know that developing higher-order questions can be difficult for teachers.  When I prepare lesson plans, I find myself writing mostly low-order questions.

My "smart, genuine question that arose from my reading:" Most of the strategies presented in the chapter focus on content area literacy in secondary education.  As an elementary teacher, which of these strategies can be best restructured to focus on elementary students?

Multigenre Research Project

My response? Wow.  Just the word multigenre is frightening to me.  The words multigenre research project are even more frightening.  They cause lots of anxiety.  I have honestly been dreading this project since I read about it on the syllabus the first day of class.  I was hoping I would feel better after reading the example and description. From reading the example and the description of the project, it seems that this requires a love and talent of writing.  These qualities are not something I possess.  It seems like my brain shuts down when I try to write.  Out of the whole project, I think the hardest part for me will be deciding on a topic.  This is something I always have trouble with.  However, if I can pick a good topic, I believe the creativity will begin to flow. 

Even after reading the description, I still do not understand what a repetend is.