Resources Used:

Making the Journey, Ch 9 - "The Craft of Questioning"

Excerpt from Jim Burke's What's the Big Idea?

My Response

In Making the Journey, Lindblom and Christenbury offer a list of reasons behind the method of questioning in the classroom and how it helps students. The importance of questioning starts off with providing students an opportunity to express their thoughts by hearing what they say. By listening to peers or reading over their answer to a question, students get a deeper look into the literature or lesson, as it helps them pan out the underlying point of the assignment. Another reason that questioning is important is that it encourages students to explore topics and argue different points of view. This allows them to function as experts on a topic once they discuss the lesson to their peers and teacher. Questioning can present students with the opportunity to interact with each other and feel safe in an environment where they can discuss these topics further. From an educator's perspective, questioning can help a teacher see how students are processing the information from the lesson. Lastly, questioning can aid in close reading exercises as students need to comprehend texts completely in order to answer the questions. All of these points highlight the positive influence of the questioning method, as students are able to say their thoughts aloud, allowing them to dive deeper into the text and feel more comfortable with the literature they are reading and analyzing. Questioning can also help them improve their social skills since they can talk with their peers and teacher in an open environment and discuss the topic at hand.

Lindblom and Christenbury also describe questions that teachers should avoid in the classroom in order to have a richer class experience. Yes-or-no questions, fill-in-the-blank questions, double questions, vague questions, loaded questions, and questions you know the answer to are some that you should not ask a class because they do not lead to a fully enriched conversation about the text, and instead they just test students on the basic information surrounding the literature. Here, students are formally answering the questions without thinking about the deeper meaning of the text. As an educator, it is my responsibility to create questions that lead to discussion and prompt students to think outside of the standard text.

Webb’s Depth of Knowledge relates to this week’s readings as both push for the need of student comprehension of literature and the assignment at hand in order to improve skill development. The first step of Webb’s Depth of Knowledge is to Recall and Reproduce, which is seen in Jim Burke's What's the Big Idea? When teachers implemented backward design in the classroom, they realized the benefits of questioning as it helps students recall information from the text. Next, students need Skills and Concepts to search for the answers from the literature and understand the use of literary devices. By understanding the concepts that are asked for, students have a better grasp of the knowledge, and they are able to these skills again once the lesson is over. Strategic Thinking is next, as it is needed to fully answer the question and make sure that students truly understand why their answer is correct. Lastly, Extended Thinking shows full control of the knowledge from the lesson as students connect outside information to the text and questions.

Overall, there are many ways a teacher can make a classroom an opening environment for discussion through the list Lindblom and Christenbury created about Questioning Behavior on the educator's end. Through some points they made in their book, I feel as if questioning, when implemented in a correct manner, can positively impact the students and the classroom. My one fear about questioning is stumping students and making them feel uncomfortable in speaking in the class setting. Here, Making the Journey points out ways to reflect back on the question and how to improve on it next time. Through reflection and modifying a lesson plan for a particular class, an educator can work out the question that works best for some students and helps others connect their knowledge skills.