Reflection no. 7

3) Questioning Strategy

Purpose:to create a life long, independent learners who uses questioning as a tool to learn.

Characteristics:

1. up to students' level, clear and simple
2. logically sequenced 
3. back ground knowledge

• Question should be relevant to the students' level, knowledge ,sequenced and active involvement.

Difference between modern way of teaching and traditional method is QUESTIONING.

What are the purpose of questioning:

1. enhance understanding of students
2. make classroom interactive
3. enhance more participation
4. to let the teacher and student conscious of what they learn
5. create an affective and efficient learning 
6. for evaluation and assessment
7. gain students' attention; maintain the f low of teaching 
8. to create a life long independent learners who uses question as a tool to learn.

Classification of questioning

The literal level ('right there on paper'): types of question most often used in the classroom.
                   e.g; what is the color of the dog named Kasper?

The inferential level ('think and search'): answer can be identified by reading in between the lines, like from different
                    e.g; how did Kasper help the other dog?

The applied level ('on your own'): answer relies mainly on the readers background knowledge and experiences. Here d reader have to analyze, synthesize and evaluate themselves.

Thinking time/ wait time: consciously waiting for students thinking on answer.

No hands questioning: student are aware that teachers will select the students to give an answer.

Basketball questioning: move questions and discussions between students.

Conscripts and volunteers: teacher select answers from those who volunteers and also equally from those who do not.

Phone a friend: those who are not able to answer are allowed to nominate another student to suggest an answer on their behalf but still they have to provide their own answer.

Hot seating: a student is placed in the hot seat to take several question from the class and teacher.

Preview: questionings are shared/displayed before being asked or before starting the lesson.

Pair rehearsal: pair of students are able to discuss and come up with agreed responses to questions together.

Eavesdropping: listen to the group discussion and target specific questions to groups and individauls.

Big questions: setting of substantial and through provoking questions .

Fat questions: seeking a minimum answers.

Skinny questions: in traditional approaches to question and answer asking everyday, questions with a fixed/ specific answer.

Seek a partial answer: provide only a partly formal answer, to promote collective engagement.

THREE TYPES OF QUESTIONING

1) Socratic questioning:

i) Conceptual clarification questions=will get to think that what you are thinking/asking about .

                                                             e.g; why are you saying that?            

ii) Probing assumptions=based on assumptions, do you agree/do not agree?

                               

iii) Probing rationale, reasons and evidence=why is that happening [reason to the question] digging into the reasons. e.g; why are this reasons?

                           

iv) Question view points and perspectives=questions that can be debated. e.g; why is it better than?

                              

v) Probe implication and consequences=having logical implication. e.g; what is the best? why?

vi) Questions about the question=ask question, instead of giving answer we ask questions to a question in return. e.g; what was the point of asking that question?

2) Blooms taxonomy (Benjamin Bloom in 1950):

i)Remembering

ii)Understanding

iii)Applying e.g; calculation

iv)Analyzing (compare and contrast)

v)Evaluating (judge, evaluate, justify(judging others' work))

vi)Creating (construct and imagine)  

3) Kipling's questions (5WH):

i) What: will have questions like; what are we doing? 

ii) Why: in order to have deeper understanding of information; why are we doing it? 

iii) When: time/for a period of time(duration); When are you leaving?

iv) Where: locate a action/event. In three dimensional space -a) on, above, under, below

                                                                                                  b) next

                                                                                                  c) New york, London, Paris

v)Who: bringing people into frame.

vi) How: seeks verb of process. e.g;how often will you see me?(time), how much will you pay me?(quantity)

Role of Teacher and Students (Socratic questioning )

1)Teacher: use of different teaching technique, prompting students' view points. Probes their understanding and shows genuine interest in their thinking.

2) Teacher poses the questions that are more meaningful then those a novice of a given topic might develop.

3) teacher creates and sustain an intellectually stimulating classroom environment and acknowledgement the value of the student in that environment. [make friendly and interactive classroom environment].

(should not interrupt in between, while student answers).

Role of students:

1. Participate when called up.
2. Answer question as carefully and clearly as possible.
3. Address the whole class so everyone can hear.
4. Be as precise as possible in the interest of maximum classroom time and effectiveness.

Merits and Demerits of Socratic questioning

Merits:

1. interactive classroom
2. participation
3. two ways learning
4. independent work
5. think and do rather than just remember
6. handling incorrect responses or no responses
7. supports active student centered learning
8. helps student to construct knowledge
9. helps students to develop problem solving skills
10. improves long term retention of knowledge
11. fosters students' meta-cognition (thinking on thinking)

Demerits:

1. time consuming
2. student's level
3. fear of questions
4. teacher should have patience
5. calling students randomly maximizes incorrect responses.  

Reflection no.6

After we were done with the inductive teaching strategy we moved on to deductive teaching strategy whereby I learned that deductive teaching  means we present all the rules and the general concept followed by application of the particular principles basically leading the students from unknown to known, abstract to concrete and complex to simple.

Purpose of deductive teaching strategy:

1. Students are taken as blank slates which means it is a teacher centered.
2.  This strategy limits the thinking ability of the students because it is a teacher centered, which will develop dependency in the students.
3. This strategy is basically used to help students with learning disability to enhance their learning.

Phases of deductive teaching strategy:

1. Presentation of abstraction.
2. The teacher illustrates it with examples.
3. Students give examples of concept andapply them in new situations.
4. Students restate the concept or definition that they have learned.

Advantages of deductive teaching strategy:

1. Less time consuming.
2. It is different from rote learning as it is a strategy where logical interlinking of the elements is encouraged.
3. Most of the school materials /curriculum can be easily taught through deductive strategy.
4. This method involves all levels of questions.

 Disadvantages of deductive teaching strategy:

1. Students are not actively involved in the beginning of the lesson.
2. Since it is a teacher centered approach, it may not be challenging for the brighter students.

Role of teachers:

1. Teachers need to plan and prepare the detail information including materials.
2. Since it is teacher centered approach, most of the work is done by the teachers.
3. Provides guidance and scaffolding.

Reflection no.5:

With regards to the  previous class, in today's class I got clear understanding of  scaffolding. Scaffolding means asking the questions in the simplified way instead of telling the answer. e.g: if we want the student to know about the adjective, we won't directly say that adjective is a describing word (she(noun) is beautiful (adjective)) instead we would ask them what is their understanding of adjective based on their previous/past knowledge and then set some examples and non-examples of adjective, prompt the students to identify the patterns in the examples. After they are familiar with the examples and non-examples we can let the students to define the adjective.

(Reflection no.3 and 4, on Wednesday and Thursday, 14^th and 15^th of March)

 I knew that inductive teaching means an inquiry or discovery based learning where by learners are taken from what they know to what they don’t know or simple to complex or concrete to abstract. The application of knowledge in inductive teaching is from known to unknown. Along that I also came across the;

1.       Concept of inductive teaching/learning strategy=discovery teaching/learning (inquiry based).

         Provide specific information to learners and ask them to explore.

Inductive teaching strategy

Guided strategy               unguided strategy

Under guided strategy: clear instruction and hints are given to the students to let them think out of box and come up with concrete conclusion.

Under unguided strategy: teacher will just be the guide, e.g. field trip (where by learners shares their exploration with a specific conclusion).

2.       Purpose of inductive teaching/learning (constructivism) =motivate both the teacher and students.

Enhance class participation (student centered) and team work.

Makes class interesting and understanding.

3.       Procedural steps of teaching/learning strategy = OEP (open ended phase), COP (convergent phase), CP (closure phase), AP (application phase (how the knowledge is transferred in real life/applied practically)).

4.       Role of teachers=provide guidance (scaffolding-a range of tasks too difficult for the child to do alone but possible with the help of adults of more skilled peers.)Modeling (demonstration).

Coaching (instruction by teachers and performance by students).

Prompting and facilitating (encouragement, directing, giving hints, feedback etc…).

Giving opportunity to students.

5.       Merits of this strategy;

a) Can be used at all levels of study at varying degrees.

b) Incorporates all the questioning techniques including prompting, probing and content review.

C) Ensures greater interaction among learners, teachers and the materials.

d) Discourages wild guessing as it needs evidence.

e) It motivates children to find and learn more.

Demerits of this strategy;

a) Time consuming

b) Minimum content coverage

c) It needs verification; some of the verification has to be done in deductive strategy

d) It is frustrating for different students (slow learners won’t be able to cope with the fast       learners)

e)all topics cannot be taught inductively.

                                               

Group questions

Difference between teaching strategy, teaching method and teaching skill;
teaching strategy-it is a plan that is intended to achieve a particular purpose of teaching
                          or carrying out a plan in a skillful way.
                          
teaching method-it is a particular way of teaching (tactics) used to carry out strategies in particular situations
                          or is the quality of being well planned and organized.
                         
teaching skill-unlike strategy, skill is more specific or in context of teaching, it can be termed as an ability
                     to teach a particular subject or topic well.
                     

Some characteristics of an affective teacher are, who is;

1. able to vary their teaching styles according to the understanding of the learners
2. able to adapt to the different sorts of teaching-learning situations that may develop
3.  possess effective way of interacting with the learners
4.  has interest to learn more than teaching
5. gives equal concern to both the low and high achievers
6. has good command over language

(Reflection no.1) on Wednesday, 7^th of March we started the lesson with meditation which I felt was interesting because we were not into the meditation that often and it taught me to be mindful. We then talked about the ground rules and we came up with ‘RAMP’, after that we discussed on youth issues which made me aware and mindful about what I should be doing as a trainee. At last the lesson was winded up by giving home task (finding meaning of-strategy, technique, method, skill, approach).

(Reflection no.2) on Thursday, 8^th of March the lesson started with meditation like the previous lesson, after that we started discussing on the home task in the form of group activity, I liked it because everyone was give chances to take part and our views were equally respected. Lastly we were given an article on teaching by Richard Leblanc to go through it and come ready for the next lesson.