Questions
Have you reflected on the questions you ask during your lessons? Do your questions increase student thinking? Do your questions allow students to have deep conversations with each other?
How do good questions
relate to good conversations?
My answers to the questions
above are:
-Yes, I always reflect on
the types of questions I ask, especially when I ask the wrong ones. That is
totally ok. It happens.
- No, not all my questions
increase student thinking. I find that out after I have asked a question
and my students have very little to discuss.
-When I ask the right questions, YES, my students hold conversations
with their partners or groups at such a deep level. They even begin to
question each other!
Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right
answers. -Josef Albers
Critical Thinking
I feel it is every
teacher's goal to get students to become critical thinkers. Making sure I
ask the right questions has helped my first-grade students think at a deeper
level. As a teacher, it is not easy to ask the right questions but it
changes the direction of your lessons when you do.
The DOK chart above is a
tool that can help with strategically planning out questions you want to ask
during your lessons. For example, we recently have read The
Gingerbread Man. Here are two examples of how different the conversations
would change with a level 1 to a level 4 question:
DOK 1- Who is the hero in
this story?
DOK 4- What would happen if
the fox did not have any intentions of eating the Gingerbread boy?
Both questions are great,
but as you can see, the second question would increase the thinking happening
in my class. The DOK 4 question would allow my students to become
critical thinkers. They would have the opportunity to agree or disagree
with each other based on their answers.
My goal is not to always
stick to one DOK level all day long. My goal is to give my students the
opportunity and encourage them to find answers on their own.
Always Learning,
Sabrina Blackwood
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