Blog Post #4

I chose to answer the questions" What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?" by looking over the article, The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom  by Ben Johnson . One topic the author points out is that teachers do not know everything. Many students are mis-lead by thinking that just because he or she is a teacher they know everything. Ben Johnson believe that teachers should not assume that all students understand the lesson. Teacher generally ask after each lesson, "does everyone understand the lesson?" Normally most students do not answer or either give an answer they know the teacher wants to hear which is yes. However, when teachers ask a question is can be to board and is not specific enough. By reading the article you learn a few ways to see if students understand and is paying attention to the lesson. To do so the teacher can ask a question and wait a few seconds for the students to think of an answer then, randomly call on a student to give their answer.

I also chose the article Three Ways to Ask Better Questions by Maryellen Weimer.  In the article Weimer remands three action to improve questions.

• Prepare Questions
• Play with Question
• Preserve Good Questions

 When planning out a lesson it would be helpful to plan out the questions you would like to ask the students. Pre-planning question helps keep the teacher from just coming up with a question in the middle of the lesson that is not clear and can confuse students. Making questions clear help you to decide rather the question is a good question to ask and it also helps you to see when it is a good time to ask the question.

Playing with a question gives students time to think about what is being asked of them, and to write the question down in their note for study purposes. When students play around with a question they are able to think deeply into the question and come up with different techniques on how to answer the question.

Preserving a good question means instead of just answering the question on spot you can waiting to find out more about the question. In the article Weimer talks about how you can take the answer sthat students give you about a question and turn the question into a more effective question than what it was before.