Blog Post #4

After reading Ben Johnson's The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom, I found myself actually thinking deeply about this particular topic for the first time. As a student, I am guilty of not always paying attention (I think we all are at some point). Whether we have a lot on our mind with work, other class assignments, or personal drama we tend to let our minds wonder in the classroom. As future teachers, we aren't going to know what's going on in the student's mind during class time.

Here at South Alabama, I find it very rare that a teacher singles out certain students to answer questions about the material being covered in class. I also know that whenever I have teachers that do actually single students out I am more likely to come to class prepared. Is that a good thing? Probably not. In order to succeed we need to be prepared for our classes whether or not our teachers call us out, but in college it may be a little different than let's say high school. In high school I was never prepared for class. I rarely did the assignments and always got help from other, smarter classmates. When the teachers would call out specific students to answer questions and the students didn't have the answer, the teacher would just make a quick remark about how the student needed to pay more attention and then would move on. Maybe in order to get students to pay attention to the questions would be to discipline them further. Just a thought. In my opinion, the best way to ask questions is to call out specific people because even though you'll still have those students who don't care, more people will come to class prepared knowing their name could actually be called.


Watching the video Asking Better Questions in the Classroom by Joanne Chesley, I first noticed how she said that students tend to be unresponsive in the classroom after a question is asked. Do I agree with this statement? Yes I do, but I don't necessarily think it's because the students don't know the answer. I pay attention in all of my classes and I take constant notes whether or not we have power points provided, but I personally do not like answering questions aloud in class. I don't like having all eyes on me, I don't like if I answer the question wrong aloud and everyone notices, it's just something that I personally do not like doing. That doesn't necessarily mean I don't know the answer.

Chesley gave two examples of questions, the closed ended question and the open ended question. What a difference both of these types of questions can make when getting an answer from a student. A simple question that only requires a "yes" or "no" answer is a question that can maybe can reworded to where the student has to think about the answer and then provide it in greater detail. Providing an answer in greater detail can help students think and learn more about the topic of discussion. Explaining the two different types of questions can definitely improve how we ask questions in the classroom.

Another way to improve asking questions in the classroom was very well demonstrated in the video Questioning Styles and Strategies. I really enjoyed watching this video because the teacher demonstrated so many different types of techniques how to answer the questions such as provisional writing and cuing (drawing pictures), think pair share (ask your neighbor), random calling (randomly calling on a student), surveying, and student calling (student calling on another student) just to name a few. These techniques really got the whole class interested in the topic being discussed and made it easier for them to participate. Another thing I think that helped the class gain so much interest was the material they were covering. Bridge to Terabithia is a very good book that will keep younger kids interested and want to participate in the questions being asked in class. 

When it comes to asking questions in class, it really is hard to get your techniques exactly right. You can only do so much to gain a child's attention. The things that stood out to me the most were to ask open-ended questions, those to which require thought and a detailed answer. I also really liked the random calling teachers did. Even though there's only so much you can do, student's are more likely to pay attention when they know they may possibly get called out in front of everyone in the classroom.