Blog Post #6

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

    "Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom," by Maryellen Weimer, Phd. While reading this blog post I discovered three intriguing tactics to follow while trying to improve your question asking skills. Most teachers do not realize that the way they ask questions to their students can really confuse them. Especially if the subject at hand was already confusing.   Do you want your teaching to be in vein? Well, if not follow these three ways to improve your question asking skills.

  1. Prepare your questions. Most teachers never prepare the questions that they are going to ask their class. They usually go off of impulse. Well there is a better way to do this. By preparing your questions before hand you have plenty of time to think them out. You will realize they will make more sense also. You should want your questions to help improve your students thinking, not quiz them with hard questions about what you just taught. A sure way to tell if you are not asking the right type of questions to your class is if no one answers it! 

2. Play with questions. Questions are most powerful in that space between the question and the answer. Playing with questions means to leave it unanswered for a while, then giving your students stimulating things to think about before answering it. This will help keep them thinking. This may also give them extra time to write down ideas and possibly their response to talk it over with other students. A good way to get the best answer is to ask the question at the beginning of the period and return to it close to the end of the period. 

3. Preserve the good questions. Your best questions may be kept. A lot of times they can be revised and saved to ensure it's a quality question. Whenever a student asks a good question you should always save it. Bringing up in class good questions that students have asked previously gives them a sense of value and that their question was important. The goal is to have students possibly start asking better questions; even ones teachers can't answer. Always remember, the only bad question is the one not asked!