Blog Post #4

What do we need to know about asking questions to be an Effective Teacher?

In The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom, the first thing that stood out to me and the first step to being an "effective teacher" is, teachers must understand that they do not know all the answers. In this post, the author said that teachers should ask questions in a random fashion. First, start by asking a question then pause for three seconds and call a student's name to get the most effect out of asking questions. I found Asking Question to Improve Learning to be a very helpful post in answering this question. In the post the author said that teachers should avoid asking leading questions. What are leading questions? According to www.dictionary.reference.com, it defined as a question so worded as to suggest the proper or desired answer. It is said that these types of questions hinder the students from thinking of the answer on their own. Also, teachers should present a yes-or-no question followed with a second question to get the students to explain why they answered the way they did. The last point found helpful was not to ask more than one question at a time. Asking more than one question at a time may confuse the students causing them  not to know which question to answer. Overall, I believe that if we combine these different ideas and others that we discover in the process of becoming a teacher, we will create a great format of question asking and become an "effective teacher" that we are all striving to be.