Questions...Questions...Questions

Questioning is one of my most favorite parts of teaching. I love to ask questions of my students just to get them thinking. Sometimes I don't care if they get the right answer or not, I just want them to think. I think a lot of the students in my class don't think for themselves, their parents do their thinking. I want to develop independent thinkers, people who own their thoughts and are confident in their answers.

Out of the Questioning toolkit, I probably tend to ask essential, clarification, and strategic questions. Essential questions to go with character building, getting students to think about their actions and words and how they conduct themselves. Clarification questions to develop understanding and strategic questions to build independent thinking. I think the strategic questions and the subsidiary questions would allow for higher order thinking. I love asking students types of Higher Order Thinking questions as they are not used to these. Many of my students are so used to going back in the text and having the answer right there for them. So when I ask them to evaluate, discuss, explain, I often get blank stares. I also tend to ask questions back to my students if they ask me questions to keep them thinking and develop their confidence in their own thinking.

I think all the question types would compliment technology integration in one way or another depending on its use. For example, telling questions are questions that can be answered through research and planning questions can be used when developing a power point or brochure.

I think questioning, in the right manner, can really challenge our students in many different ways and will really help them continue to develop into independent thinkers.