Using the Question in the Classroom
Kathleen Cotton discusses placement and timing of questions in the classroom. While we have already seen the tremendous advantages questions carry, their use and implementation is critical for your students to get the most they can out of their learning.
- Asking questions frequently during class discussions is positively related to learning facts. Ask questions often! Frequent questioning is positively correlated to the acquisition of facts.
- Increasing the frequency of classroom questions does not enhance the learning of more complex material. Just because you ask more, it does not mean that students will understand more complicated material faster. While questions are beneficial to the learning process, they do not take the place of sequential learning broken down into understandable, digestible chunks.
- Posing questions before reading and studying material is effective for students who are older, of high ability, and/or known to be interested in the subject matter. Asking questions prior to reading a text is only suitable for certain populations. While providing guide questions can prepare learners for what they are about to read and allow them the opportunity to organize their thoughts, guide questions will not be effective with all audiences.
- Very young children and poor readers tend to focus only on material that will help them answer questions if they are posed before the lesson is presented. Know your population of learners! If you are working with young or poor readers, by presenting them with a question before they begin reading, they will focus only on finding out the answer to the question presented rather than gaining a global understanding of the presented material. In these circumstances, it is best to allow your students to begin the assignment unguided, without pre-reading questions.
Click here to return to Unit Three: How Should an Educator Question his Students?#mini-lecture
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