On Monday, October 14, 2013 I observed my mentor teacher Sue, again in sophomore biology. The plan for that day was to post lab Friday’s lab on biomolecules called “Turning Corn into Milk”. I noticed right away that Sue uses questioning as a major tool in her teaching style.
Again, like any other day for these sophomores there were two warm up questions on the board. This was her first use of questioning, before even speaking one word to the students.
- What biomolecules did your group find in the corn and in the milk?
- What four elements make up protein molecules? Can an organism construct a protein molecule without eating protein?
The first question was used to review Friday’s lab. It required them to either look or think back to their data from before the weekend and get focused. The second question was used to introduce today’s lesson. I like how she used two questions serving slightly different purposes for the start of class. The questions helped the students get on task and they also helped Friday’s lesson flow into todays.
The next way she used questions was while answering the warm-ups with the class. She read the questions aloud as a question to the students. Then to call on students, since on this particular day not many people volunteered to answer (this is not always the case), she called on whomever she wanted. This might have been students whom seemed to know the answer but do not usually talk, or students she wanted to get on task. This included both boys and girls.
I noticed that Sue uses a lot of probing questions to direct her discussions. These at first seem to be open-ended questions to include the class in the discussion. However, before the students have the opportunity to answer the question, she answers. This is why I feel that they are more to direct the discussion rather than as open-ended questions. I like that she does this to keep the discussion directed, but I do think she should give the students to answer these questions sometimes. Another way she uses questions to keep students engaged is by asking “right?” after most of her statements. This is similar to the opened-ended questions that are used to direct the discussion as well as gauge the students’ level of understanding.
Overall, I noticed that questions are a very important teaching tool for Sue. I do think she could use more open-ended questions to involve the class more. But I like her use of probing questions and agreeing questions to keep the students engaged and gauge their level of understanding. These are definitely tools I will take into my own classroom.
Marissa 
I liked the questions posted for the warm up and your explanation of them. I wonder if the students understood the purpose as well as you did. What if the questions were prefaced with, “Looking back at Friday’s lab,” and “Thinking ahead to today’s lesson,”? I tried to explain a math entry task to someone, and their question was, ‘What was the point?’ which is what the students are thinking, too, especially when they don’t ‘get’ what we want them to.
I think we have to establish beforehand when we want to have a discussion, or when we are trying to involve the students in answering knowledge questions. I think the first question was verifying information, and the second question was for them to make a hypothesis.
Questioning is such a natural way to teach, it seems like we do it all the time. My mentor likes to return a question with another question, like a tennis volley. Typically, it’s something like this:
Student: So, what does constitute food for a plant? (a question right off the worksheet they’re doing)
Teacher: Wouldn’t that depend on what you think “food” means? (walks away)
Because our class is physically organized into little pods of three or four students, this often provides a little nugget of information to the entire team, and to nearby teams — hey, she’s right, it does depend on what the definition of “food” is, and didn’t we talk about this in the animals unit a week or so ago?
We try to use class votes a lot, and we’ve been at some pains to get the students to know that being wrong isn’t the worst thing in the world — I’d rather have a class all raise their hands at the wrong answer than have them all sitting there in glum silence.
For myself, I have to really internalize the idea of asking questions for a reason, beyond simply finding out if they know what I’m talking about. This leads into a Socratic direction: by asking questions, you get them to ask themselves questions and discover the answers themselves. Ideally, anyway! In the end they’re guided, but don’t even know it. After watching that little edTPA video a week or so ago, I was struck by how productive that teacher’s questions were: not just filling time, but shaping inquiry. I wish I could do that so effortlessly!