Blog Post #6

"What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?"

 As teachers, we need to understand that asking questions is an extremely important part of our job. Asking questions creates opportunities for students to voice their opinions and for teachers to be able to evaluate these responses to see how students are progressing. Asking questions does not only help teachers teach but also helps teachers learn. Teachers learn just as students do. Many teachers have a misunderstanding that they need to know everything about a subject for them to be able to teach that subject. Students sometimes teach teachers things that they did not even know!

In Ben Johnson's blog post The right way to ask questions in the classroom he tells that some questions teachers use are over used and basically pointless. For example, when teachers ask " Does everybody understand?" Ben explains that teachers ask this question even though they know that whether students respond of not some of them still do not understand but teachers still continues to ask the question. He goes on to say that some students do not understand that they don't understand, and if they do not understand that they don't understand they can not ask questions. Tricky huh? Ben then tells that teachers should ask specific questions instead of broad yes or no questions like the "does everyone understand?"

 In my opinion teachers should ask questions that require students to apply what they were just taught instead of yes or no question. For example, I am planning on becoming a PE teacher so if I am teaching the students how to shoot a jump shot instead explaining it to them and then simply asking if they understand I will ask them to show me how to shoot the jump shot I just explained.

In Asking better questions in the classroom  by Joanne Chelsey she gives explains the
differences between open ended questions and closed ended questions. Open ended questions create the opportunity for students to give intellectual answers instead of short yes or no answers. A closed ended question makes it easy for students to just simply answer with yes or. An example of a closed ended question could be: If computers were involved in PE classes would it change the way PE teaches teach? That can simply be answered with a yes, or no. An example of and open eded question could be: If computers were involved in PE classes how would it change the way PE teachers teach? I feel that this is a very effective way of teaching and will be implemented into y teaching methods as much as possible.