Candice Seawright Teaching Science to Children Mrs.

McClary April 20, 2014 Effective Questioning I know that effective questioning is very important for teachers and for students. Effectives questioning is especially important for Science teachers. Asking the right questions can help students with they are making an inquiry. During my observation at Brookdale Elementary School with Mr. Burgess, I have noticed a great variety of open and closed questions used in the classroom. As a future teacher, I know it is better to use more open-ended questions than closed-ended questions in the classroom. A closed-ended question is one that can be answered in a simple yes or no. They do not really encourage students to think and can really be answered in two to three seconds. As a teacher, you want your students to think about what you are asking them. Thus is why you should open-ended question in the classroom. They help students think more and allow for a more thoughtful and accurate answer. Mr. Burgess did a great job with asking his students more open-ended questions when needed in his classroom. While I was observing, I did notice Mr. Burgess using the wait time strategy I have heard so much about. If he asked the students a question, he did not just call on the first student he saw raise their hand, he waited about five to seven seconds for students to think and then call on a student to answer. The one strategy I found to be very interesting that Mr. Burgess would do is increase the wait time for an answer but give what we will call hints to the students whose

hands were not up. This could have been because students did not understand the question, students were confused or they just did not know. So to help these students, he gives them little hints to help them. I did however notice when he did this, more thinking took place and more hands went into the air, which meant more students had drawn a conclusion what they answer was. So this was a good strategy to use in the future. As I mentioned before, Mr. Burgess asked his students a variety of opened-ended and closed-ended question when necessary. I wrote a few questions down that Mr. Burgess asked the students about mixtures and solutions. One question was, Give an example of what a mixture is? This is a closed-ended question because it only required a couple of words and seconds to answer this question. Another question that was asked during this time was Can you separate a solution? How? Before Mr. Burgess added the how portion to the question, all of the students hands went up, once he added, a lot of the students hands went down. Thus making the wait time increase and have students think a little longer to how they could possibly separate a solution. A third question Mr. Burgess asked his students was Is rubbing alcohol a solid, liquid or gas? This is an example of a closed-ended question because students only have to answer the question with a simple word. It did not need too much thinking time because most of the students raised their hands right away. So Mr. Burgess did not need to wait so much time for an answer. The last question I have written down that Mr. Burgess asked his students was What two things would you use to make a solution and why? On this question, students needed a longer wait time to answer because Mr. Burgess had to help probe them for an answer. I believe all of these questions are needed to help effectively question a student on the content knowledge.