Questioning is actually a little harder than what you would expect. How do you ask a question and get students to respond? How do you ask a question that the students understand? How do you ask questions that make the students think a little harder and not just recall facts? How do you make sure every student is heard and not just 1 or 2 who love to participate?
These are all questions that I have contemplated over the past week or so. I have had two problems with my questioning. First of all, I have two brilliant students who are always willing to answer questions, but the rest of the class is much more timid. And then my other problem is asking questions that cause the students to take the knowledge that they have and take it a step further.
The other day I sat at lunch with both the students who love answering all the questions and they said something to me that I didn't expect to hear. They said, "Ms. Jones you discriminating!" Baffled I replied, "Excuse me?" And they said, "Yeah you never call on boys! Only girls!" This completely caught me off guard. I stopped to think about it and realized that no I was calling on everyone but these two boys want to be called on every time. Of course I couldn't do this. There are 32 other students in my class. I can't just focus on two students. Its a constant battle back and forth about calling on them and asking them to wait a second and let the others try to figure out the answer. And that is when the brilliance of cold calling (randomly pulling names from a cup and calling on students) comes to my rescue. If these two students see that everyone gets the same chance of being called on, its not just me "discriminating" against the boys. Its simply the luck of the draw. Plus it helps involve the other students. I am for sure pro-cold calling!
I also tried muddy questions with my class. I handed out notecards at the end of the period and asked them to write down what was difficult. 95% of the class said they were confused with what we just went over. I kind of read those and tossed them to the side because there was a new topic introduced that period and it would be continued in the next one. But there were 2 or 3 cards with brilliant statements. The one that said the most intriguing thing sadi "everything is confusing because you go to fast and I don't understand." Now this is the nature of summer school. You just have to push forward, but I appreciated knowing that some students just weren't keeping up. Hell, I have a hard time keeping up. MY head is spinning 90% of the time as well so I can only imagine how the students feel. I have mixed feelings about this one because 95% of the class wrote something that was obvious (perhaps I need to choose a better period to do them?) but I can't ignore the few cards that gave me a bit of insight as to how the students were actually doing. So I will have to try this one again before I make any final decisions on it.
Questioning. Probably one of my weakest points. I plan to start writing in my lesson plans with higher level questions already included. Therefore I can glance at them rather than just rapid fire question the class with whatever is the first question to pop into my head.
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