Questions?

This chapter discussed how we should use questions in many different ways. Questions should be used to help students generate prior knowledge. They should also be used to aid students in problem solving. “Unfortunately, many students have little practice in answering implicit questions and may be ill-equipped to formulate and respond to questions requiring critical thinking. In secondary schools it is imperative to create a classroom culture of inquiry”(Fisher & Frey,81).Why wouldn’t this also be imperative for primary schools? How young is too early to start learning how to think critically? Students will be more likely to retain the information if they are allowed to figure out the answer for themselves. They should never be given the correct answers. They should always be led to the correct answers through questions and small hints given by the teacher. Open ended questions are very good tools to use in the classroom. These questions are not predictable so they force the students to think about them on a higher level. Higher order thinking requires students to think on a higher level than just memorizing or repeating something back. This makes them actually have to use their brain and think for themselves. Closed ended questions can be short and sweet, but require little to no thinking, and can be answered correctly by a guess far too often. I read about one strategy called the IRE, which stands for initiate, respond and evaluate. This is pretty much the teacher asking a question, the student answering it, and the teacher giving feedback. I think we all have seen this strategy a time or two, nothing to see here, move along. There were many strategies talked about but the two I thought were interesting were the ReQuest and the SQ3R. The ReQuest method teaches students how to analyze their comprehension while reading. The teacher guides group questioning throughout the lesson. Students are taught to observe the questions of their teacher, which shows them how to distinguish important info from the useless info. The ReQuest is made up of summarizing and clarifying information, generation of questions based on information, and interactions between the students and teacher. SQ3R is another strategy talked about in the book and it involves five steps. These steps are survey, question, read, recite and review. This strategy is pretty complicated but basically you start off by skimming the pages of the text, generating questions, turning each subheading into questions. Next, read each section and answer the questions while looking up and reciting each answer. After completing the chapter, review your notes and find the main ideas.