I have been wondering about the best way to ask questions without directly giving the answer away to my students. I found the article by Frey and Fisher entitled "Idenfitying Instructional Moves During Guided Learning" very helpful in discussing different types of questions to ask your students. Not only do they provide a list of different types of questions and examples of when they are best used, but they also include a section on cues. There are visual cues, environmental cues, verbal cues, and physical cues. I like the idea of using questions to guide students to the right answer. It is never fun to have the answer told to you when you are trying to figure something out for yourself. I think that as teachers, we many times need to just "cool it" and give our students the opportunity to come up with the correct answer.
While all of these cues and prompts may be a good idea (a great idea, in fact), it can be a little overwhelming to know how to implement them into the classroom. I appreciated Chapter 12 in the Allington and Cunningham textbook which gave examples of how to structure your day in the classroom. I also appreciated the way that they incorporated some of their own ideas that have been used throughout the textbook and worked them into the schedule.
Overall, I feel much more confident on different ways to actually "teach" my students so that they will be able to construct the most amount of meaning from my instructions and lessons.
When do you think you need to use more than simply prompting and cueing? Do you think that the techniques offered in this article would give you a good basis of informal assessment? I sure do!
I have always loved asking children open ended questions to guide their learning. This allows them to construct their own thoughts and ideas rather than the teacher just feeding them an overused, vanilla-type answer. I think by asking children open ended questions it makes them process their thoughts and ideas more than other types of conversations that may be had.
ReplyDeleteI was always the child who wanted the teacher to give me the answer. As technology is advancing, I feel like children will become more demanding of this, and these strategies are great in helping us learn how to aid our students in finding the right answer independently.
ReplyDeleteAsking Appropriate questions that help find the answer without giving it to the students becomes easier with practice. I work with a girl for hw and she always wants the answer but she's learned I'll help her find a way to activate what she already knows to find the answer.
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