Classroom Questioning Strategies

It is my belief that teachers use questioning strategies for a variety of reasons. Some of those reasons include reviewing previous lessons, actively involving students in the lesson, assessing mastery of the goals and objectives, and helping them develop critical thinking skills. When I taught my first lesson in the classroom I felt that using questioning strategies enhanced the lesson material. When I used questions that seem to focus on important elements of the lesson it helped the student to better understand the material being presented. Today as I observed my mentor teacher’s questioning strategies I noticed many great ideas that I liked. This week we have been working on comparing and contrasting two different text passages that are about the same subject. We have been finding out many different facts about spiders and listing them on Venn Diagrams showing which facts are contained in both texts and which facts are only contained in one text or the other. I have learned much more about spiders than I really wanted …show more content…
She asked the question, “What is the most interesting fact that you learned about spiders?” Instead of just calling on a few students to answer this question, first she had all the students think about their answer. Then she asked the students facing the clock to share their answer with their face partner. After that she had the students facing the window to share their answer with their face partner. Lastly, she called on a few students to share the fact about spiders that they found most interesting with the class. I actually used this strategy in my lesson that I taught as well and it is fun to see the entire class engaged in a discussion. This gives all the students a chance to share their ideas and not just the few that the teacher may choose to call on. I must admit that at times I am completely amazed at the intelligent answers that the students come up with. Children never cease to amaze