In
many of the classrooms that I have observed in most of the questioning has been
very simple; a teacher asks a question and calls on students until one provides
the correct answer. This is similar to
some of the scenarios described in the reading for today. Unfortunately, because many students are “trained”
to expect this pattern of question and response, students do not know how to
respond to open-ended questions. How can
teachers encourage students to engage in divergent thinking without the fear of
being incorrect? What will help make
students comfortable enough to take risks with their involvement in the
classroom?
I
have noticed that my fourth graders have the habit of not taking risks during
whole group and small group discussions. Questions from myself such as, “What
makes you think that?” or “Why do you say that?” tend to frustrate my students
because they want to know if what they said is right or wrong. I think that, during my guided lead teaching,
I would like to start using the strategy of explaining to my students the
difference between an assessment question and an authentic question to make
them more comfortable with taking risks during class. Hopefully, this comfort will transfer to other
content areas and make group discussions more meaningful.
How do your students feel about answering questions
when they are not sure of their answers? What do you do to encourage your
students to share their thoughts or ideas?
In my class, discussions are a huge portion of our day. We encourage our students to not only answer questions, but to ask questions whenever they are confused or wonder about something. Sometimes closed-ended questions are turned into open-ended ones and students are allowed to develop their answers as they go, even if they begin to drift off topic. As long as we (the teacher) direct the lesson back on track, it is important for students to be able to express their thoughts and not have the teacher cut them off just because they may not fully be grasping the concept. If we did not let them finish their train of thought, they may be less likely to participate in the future for fear of being wrong. Most of the students in my class enjoy participating and answering questions, but for the sake of not always hearing from the same students, I will call on a quieter student and help them work through their answer to try to make them feel comfortable with speaking in front of the group. One way to extend a student's thinking is to ask them another question(s) to get them to go deeper into their own thoughts. Pushing them in this way may surprise not only the teacher, but the student as well. This week, we have started talking about author's purpose and have been asking the students much “thicker” questions about why the author chose the characters, style, genre, and setting they did. These questions have really made my students stop and wonder about deeper elements of the story, and have been taking their time to answer. I am wondering if they are going to begin to have trouble taking risks now that the questions I am asking are not as thin.
ReplyDeleteTaylor, I think it is a great idea to explain the difference between authentic and assessment questions to your students. What will you do if they are still getting frustrated during this transition? What sort of discussions/settings do you think your students will feel the most comfortable taking risks in (small group, student-led, teacher-led)?
Questions were always a tricky for me as a student. If I knew the answer to a question that was asked of me, I would answer the question but not go into anymore detail than was asked. I didn’t go further than the question prompted me. My thinking stayed on the basic level and I thought of the question as it was written. Now that I know a lot more about education and my learning process I wish I would have put more effort into answering questions more thoroughly and seeing answers that were beyond the question. Questions when I was in school were so cut and dry. You were right or wrong. You didn’t have to think beyond the question and to tell you the truth I don’t think I learned a whole lot that way. As a teacher I want to think of asking questions as a beginning point instead of asking them at the end of the lesson. I want my questions to mean more to the students than just figuring out if they get the topic or not. I want to use my questions as a tool to help guide them to the right answer. Sometimes you can learn more from making a mistake but seeing how it got you to the correct answer and I think having my students listen to one another can be really beneficial. I’ll draw sticks to make sure everyone gets their chance to be included in the conversation. To make sure that my students are comfortable with this kind of discussion I’ll explain that there are no correct answers that I’m specifically looking for and if a student gets stuck they can ask me a question about what we are doing instead. This way they won’t feel so pressured and on the spot.
ReplyDeleteTaylor,
I would try to draw sticks to help everyone become involved. Try having them ask you a question if they feel too on the spot or they can simply pass their turn and you can come back to them when they have more of an idea. Another thing that might be cool to try is having the students respond to each other’s question with a new question the previous one made them think about.