This helps the students to start thinking about the material and helps them to learn it. If you ask questions, it will also reinforce what has been taught and also increase self confidence within the students.
Hi Karen, Thanks for your post to the forum. "Facilitator" is indeed the important designation! Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
Susan Polick
Hi Najla, Thanks for your post to the forum. Yes, learning how to ask questions will be a valuable skill throughout our students' careers! Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
Susan Polick
If an instructor asks the correct questions in the correct way, this can start the class on the path toward an in depth discussion of a topic which leads to deeper learning for the students.
This sort of discussion helps students develop a better understanding of a topic because they have to be able to verbalize their learning. It also allows students to teach each other through sharing their knowledge and understanding. Teaching is one of the best ways of learning.
The instructor needs to be aware of possible roadblocks to this working. Some examples could be that the questions asked by the instructor are too simple or too advanced for the class, the class has a "know-it-all" student who wants to dominate, or the students are not comfortable enough in the class to speak up. It is up to the instructor to be a good facilitator in order to make questioning a useful teaching tool.
By asking questions, students reinforce their learning as they point to the area where they need more clarification or more explanation.This way, they are motivated and at the same time they built a certain confidence that allow them to face situations and solve problems in their future life and this is the key to success.
Questioning gets the discussion started. Now we can go in the direction that I would like to take them.
I appreciate your post about rephrasing the questions. I like to state the question and answers after the discussion in a way that the information is presented as info versus a question. From that statement we go further into other questions around that statement.
Hi David, Thanks for sharing a great summary of the value of usuing questioning! Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
Susan Polick
Using questioning as a teaching method shows the learner the importance of questioning, good techniques for questioning, and also the results of good questioning. As the learner learns how to question properly they will see that it provides the opportunity to gather, process, and connect concepts and information. As a result, they will also learn how to become more self-directed in the learning process.
Hi Dinapoles, Thanks for your post to the forum. Questioning is indeed one of the best ways for us to acquire the feedback that we need to constantly improve our instruction. Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
Susan Polick
this way they can realize the information they lack as well as the information that they've mastered.
I tell my students to recall (if they can) their childhood when they used to ask their parents WHY all the times. Same applies to them now with a difference as this time they should be asking that WHY to themselves as well as to their teachers and peers.
The right type of question helps the student to think about the question as well as an approrpriate answer/response.
I think of it like Jeopardy. Forming a question requires thinking about the topic and searches for deeper understanding of the idea. The student is required to connect ideas and sequence the information around the missing parts to form a question about what is not understood.
Asking students questions give them something to think about and stimulates their mind for a response that they feel is appropriate,especially scenerio questions that ask for ex- what would you do first, or what would be the best response
Hi Adam, Thanks for sharing some great examples of active learning! Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
Susan Polick
Hi Sharon , Giving students time to work on questions before class also makes them more confident when answering questions while in class. Best wishes for continued success in your teaching career. Susan
Susan Polick
I like utilizing the Socratic method for questions in order to build on application of course concepts. Small-group work can often find students applying the conflict of a character in a short story to one's own life or the lives of friends and family. In fact, one class was discussing a father/daughter relationship, and through a personal experience discussion question, we came to understand Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy" and the way in which children subconsciously compete with their parents, challenging them, not unlike how one American generation always compares themselves to the previous one.
I like to pose a "homework question" during the class that requires thought and research outside of the classroom. The students then have time to think about the question, gain information via internet, newspapers, etc., and formulate answers, or other questions, that we include in our next class.
By pinpointing what they did not know they did not know, students are encouraged to delve further into the material to gain understanding
