PowerPoint Presentation. Questioning our Questioning! Mar 30 My school has done a lot of work in developing questioning skills to support teaching and learning. The idea of “fat” and “skinny”/open and closed questions has been emphasised in student research projects and discussion building. “Enabling” and “extending” prompts is our current focus in Mathematics differentiation in particular to cater for the needs of the wide spectrum of skill levels. One aspect we haven’t covered enough as a school that I have always seen as an area for improvement is how teachers elicit responses from the students themselves during lessons. This is something I always emphasize in my role as a mentor for graduate teachers. Targeted questioning addresses this issue in different ways.
In preparing lessons for Literacy using the “Reading to Learn” program/strategy, one of the key factors for success is creating differentiated questions that involve all students in the discussion and comprehension of the text being explored. Learners Should Be Developing Their Own Essential Questions. Having essential questions drive curriculum and learning has become core to many educators’ instructional practices. Grant Wiggins, in his work on Understanding By Design, describes an essential question as: A meaning of “essential” involves important questions that recur throughout one’s life. Such questions are broad in scope and timeless by nature. They are perpetually arguable – What is justice?
Is art a matter of taste or principles? How far should we tamper with our own biology and chemistry? Is science compatible with religion? Although essential questions are powerful advance organizers and curriculum drivers, the problem is that the essential questions are typically developed by the educator not the learners. Jamie McKenzie describes what actually happens in most schools and classrooms in terms of questioning. There have always been plenty of questions in schools, but most of them have come from the teacher, often at the rate of one question every 2-3 seconds. Like this: The Question Mark. Questions, Research, the Research Cycle and Information Literacy.