Do you ask good questions?

Good Morning Deep Creek School Family, 

It is hard to believe it is the end of the first nine weeks already. Routines are set and learning is occurring all around campus. We canceled Music & Measurement as to not distract from the routines and learning that have just begun. We recognize there are enough distractions within the normal course of a school day. Minimizing those interruptions and ensuring engaged learning is occurring in your classroom is a priority. We can tell and we appreciate all your effort toward that.

Hattie has shared that questioning takes up so much of the classroom time that it is essential for teachers to be skilled at questioning techniques. In fact he stated that skilled questioning by teachers can guide students to thoughtful and reflective answers which will facilitate higher levels of academic achievement. Questions serve many purposes. They can help pupils to reflect on information and commit it to memory. They can develop thinking skills, encourage discussion and stimulate new ideas. Questions allow teachers to determine how much a class understands and enable them to pitch lessons at an appropriate level. They are an important tool for managing the classroom, helping to draw individuals into the lesson and keeping them interested and alert. And questions have a symbolic value - sending a clear message that pupils are expected to be active participants in the learning process. That is why element 26 is so important and remember the key to this element is questioning. If you aren't asking good questions, does the response rate even matter?

Hattie discussed lower level questions are more effective when aiming at surface level information, and a mixture of lower and higher level questions are more effective when aiming at deeper information and understanding.

Effective questioning:

• involves all students
• engages students in thinking for themselves
• reinforces and revisits learning objectives/goals
• shows connections between previous and new learning
• gives the teacher immediate feedback on students’ understanding, which they can then use to modify teaching
• includes ‘staging’ questions to draw students towards key understanding or to increase the level of challenge in a lesson as it proceeds
• helps students develop their thinking from the lower order concrete and factual recall type to the higher order analytical, conceptual and evaluative which promote deeper understanding
• promotes justification and reasoning
• encourages students to speculate and hypothesis
• can support students to draw inferences
• keeps students focused on the salient elements in a lesson and not on extraneous matters
• encourages students to ask as well as to ‘receive’ questions
• encourages students to listen and respond to each other as well as to the teacher
• creates an atmosphere of trust where students’ opinions and ideas are valued and where teacher praise can be connected directly to their responses

As a teacher, developing really effective questioning isn’t something that just happens. Effective questioning is an aspect of a teacher’s professional practice that needs to be developed and honed throughout a teacher’s career.

It is recommended that teachers need to: critically reflect on their practice in relation to questioning; observe the questioning practice of others; have others observe them; work with colleagues to track and evaluate the frequency and types of questions they ask and then plan ways to sharpen and improve these practices.

More specifically, when planning to incorporate effective questioning into teaching practice teachers need to:

• examine and reflect upon questioning practices
• establish expectations
• establish student accountability
• build essential questions into lesson plans
• ask more open questions
• use questions to promote collaboration
• involve students in forming and asking questions

For more info check out this website:  http://www.ssgt.nsw.edu.au/teacher_questioning.htm

Questioning is one of those areas that you would benefit from recording yourself and reflecting on your questioning techniques. Remember Weston (Bold School) said the best athletes video tape their games and critique their performances for growth. Why again do we not do that as teachers? Use your ipad, it is quick and easy.

Please review the master calendar for the week!

Thanks for all you do,
Adrienne and James