Journal Entry #4: How can I develop more effective questioning strategies?

Questioning is, first and foremost, one of the most important tools a teacher has when conducting a lesson. Questions however, like all good lessons, must be carefully structured and planned so as to be highly effective. I have come to understand, through actual teaching experience, just how valuable a properly structured question can be and, conversely, how wasteful and even counterproductive a poorly structured question is. Throughout my journey as an evolving teacher, I have been working tirelessly at creating more valuable, effective, and meaningful questions that I know will elicit thoughtful and appropriate responses form my students. While I can safely say that my questions have improved since I first began my student teaching experience a couple of months ago, there is still plenty of more room for improvement. For example, according to Bloom’s Taxonomy, there are multiple levels of questions. The lowest forms of questions lie within the “Comprehension” or “Remember” category, in which the teacher may ask questions that require students to simply regurgitate memorized material. The higher categories of the taxonomy however, require a great deal more critical and analytical thinking. Questioning categories like “Evaluate” or “Create” on Bloom’s Taxonomy require students to do far more in order to effectively answer any given question and these are the categories I strive for in every lesson. Obviously, not every question that I ask my students can possibly fall in to these higher categories, nor should they. The most important thing to remember regarding Bloom’s Taxonomy is that the teacher should utilize every category, from “Remember” to “Create” and everything in between. What I try to avoid, and what any good teacher should try to avoid, is spending too much of my questioning time in the lower categories of the taxonomy without ever really breeching the higher levels of questioning and thinking.

            In order to improve my own questioning strategies, I always make sure to plan at least a great deal of my questions for the lesson while lesson planning. I have found that my questions are often far more effective when I have spent time before the lesson constructing them carefully rather than always coming up with them on the spot. I also make sure to use certain words in my questions that I know will help elicit more meaningful responses from students. Every category on Bloom’s Taxonomy has certain key words that often appear in the questions that fit in to that particular questioning level. For example, questions that fall in to the “Analyze” category often have words like “analyze,” “compare,” “contrast,” and “infer” within the questions themselves. I am always sure to consult my list of key words and questioning levels when constructing questions, so as to ensure that the actual wording of my questions is helping accomplish what I am setting out to accomplish. Another incredibly important procedure that I am constantly trying to improve is wait time. Essentially, wait time is the amount of time a teacher chooses to wait for a student response after asking a question. While a teacher’s first impulse is often to quickly move on after asking a student a question, adequate wait time ensures that the teacher is giving the student enough time to first construct a meaningful response before answering the question. As I continue on my journey as a teacher, I hope that I may continue to improve my questioning strategies with the help of a few of the aforementioned techniques discussed above.

Journal Entry # 3: Why are critical thinking skills so important to impart to my students in a democratic, diverse society? How can I help students to acquire critical thinking skills, content specific literacies, and problem solving techniques required for college and career readiness in multiple disciplines?

As is blatantly clear, we live in a world that is far from black and white. All of the simple questions that we remember from our respective childhoods like "do I want chocolate or vanilla ice cream?" or "do I want to go play with my friends after school or watch a movie with my family?" have been replaced with questions like "what can I do to find a career in an unstable economy?" and "what rights do I truly have as a citizen in a democracy that is currently in a state of unrest and fluctuation?" These kinds of questions haunt adults, both young and old, every single day. However, another perhaps even more important question we teachers should be asking ourselves is "how do I begin to prepare my students for a life in a world full of grey uncertainty?" One of the best answers to such an intimidating question as this is simply, to promote high levels of critical thinking in the classroom. "Critical thinking" however, is a term often thrown around a lot these days, but, in its simplest form, critical thinking is really just the ability to apply acute reasoning to any situation or assertion and then evaluate that situation or assertion by figuring out how true or false, favorable or unpleasant said situation or assertion really is. While most of us do this everyday without even thinking about it, our ability to carry out this critical process of reasoning did not necessarily come naturally. Rather, this critical thinking process is something we acquired over the course of our lives and it is a process that is incredibly important, particularly in adulthood. The questions we often face are no longer the "yes" and "no" questions that marked most of our childhoods. We are constantly forced to evaluate situations or assertions (How much money could I put down on a new car? Who is the better candidate in the election and why? Is he really looking our for my best interest or is he simply using me for his own personal gain?) and the ability to do this effectively could make or break our future as critical and informed members of society. The question however, still remains: How do we teach our students this skill?

A few of what seem to be the best answers to this question all lie with processes many teachers are familiar with. One, for example, is simply modeling critical thinking skills in class. We have learned and continue to learn much of what we know through first watching someone else do it and then imitating the same action ourselves. If we as teachers incorporate critical thinking skills in to the classroom everyday, we are, in effect, modeling those skills for students. Allowing students to watch a questioning strategy the teacher uses while approaching a question or text for the first time for example, is a great way to model critical thinking skills. After all, questioning is one of the keys to truly mastering critical thinking. Another example of how to teach critical thinking skills and, more generally, problem solving as a whole, can be found in introducing real-world scenarios, current events, and relevant information to students in to the classroom.  While students can undoubtedly learn from an algebra problem or a novel, it may be much easier to model an effective critical reasoning strategy when applying it to real-world or real-life events. This idea can be expanded in to a third category. The Common Core National Standards have begun to push teachers to introduce more content-specific texts in the classroom so as to increase literacy all across the board. Conveniently enough, "literacy" is really just a critical process of thinking. Individuals who are truly "literate" in a content area can approach any situation that arises within the content area with a critical response. Therefore, introducing more content-specific texts to boost literacy and critical thinking skills is crucial. These content-specific texts may be non-fiction articles about the state of the subject area itself or perhaps pieces of literary criticism. Any kind of text that not only deals with the subject area, but is also able to take the subject area to new and exciting contexts that students have never interacted with or thought about before is key to boosting both literacy and critical thinking skills.

Basic ELA-Style Essay Design Popplet

The following is a concept map, which I created on Popplet, that breaks down the writing strategies specifically associated with the New York State ELA exam. My seventh grade students found this to be extremely helpful while we were discussing long response layouts and writing format.