Blog Post 4: What questions do we ask? How do we ask?

     Asking questions is something teachers should do all of the time, but they need to be mindful of how they ask questions and exactly what questions they ask. Andi Stix says, in her video Open Ended Questions, that teachers should try and always ask open-ended questions versus close-ended questions. I completely agree with her, because this allows for the student's mind to start working and thinking of an answer instead of just a quick yes or no response. The lack of student involvement during classroom discussions can be a problem and in the video, Asking Better Question in the Classroom, Joanne Chesley says that we (teachers) are getting what we asked for by asking close ended questions. Teacher's should always try to engage their students and involve them in discussions and have them create questions or answer them a little more in depth, this can only help the students further themselves in their education.

     How might one go about asking such intriguing questions? The article, Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom, gives three very good ways to come up with questions. The first way they say is to prepare your questions. You, the teacher, should go into your lesson with some questions already written down so that you do not have to think of how to word it or present it while in the middle of teaching. The second way is to play with good questions. This is when you present a question maybe at the beginning of the lesson just to stimulate the student's minds, but do not answer the question until the end of the lesson. The third way is preserving good questions. This does not mean only preserving the questions that you asked the students, but also preserving their responses. This may help you rethink or revise your original question.