Chapter 3: Thinking and Questioning: Skills for Meaningful Learning

We ask questions every single day without even thinking twice about it. When  I think about it I couldn't even tell you how many questions I have asked today alone. There are many different reasons that we ask questions but I have never really thought about why. We ask questions to gather information, to clarify thoughts, to learn new things, and to guide thinking along with many other things. There are three different levels of thinking that we use when we ask a question. The first is the lowest, this is when we simply recall information. The middle or intermediate level is where we process information and the highest level is where we apply our previous knowledge to new situations. There are eight different kinds of questions that span throughout all three levels of thinking: analytic, clarifying, convergent-thinking, cueing, divergent-thinking, evaluative, focus, and probing. Each of these questions has it's place in the education classroom and can be used to benefit students. It all depends on how you use each type of question. I think that creating effective questions and implementing them is something that is going to take a little bit of practice on my part. I am still getting my feet wet as far as being in a classroom and I haven't had a whole lot of experience leading a whole class. I think that once I work with students more and more throughout my last couple years of school I will become much better and more fluent in asking the right questions at the right times for each individual situation. I think that this is going to be a struggle for me because you can't just ask the question you have to consider wording, you can't call on the same students over and over again, and you have to give sufficient time for students to respond. I guess as a teacher we are always doing a million and one things at a time so this is just another strategy to work on to keep in my list of effective teaching tools.