Today was my second visit at my practicum school, and the focus of the day was question asking. I noticed several ways of asking students questions. One way was for a teacher to ask a question and pause for the last word in hopes that the students would fill in the “blank”. This was for easy questions. Another question asking method I observed was for a teacher to give a small hint, and go around the class asking students what they thought the answer was. When a student would not answer the question right the teacher would move on to the next hand, and so on until a student answered it right. If it was a discussion, the teacher would then provide a small hint about the content and then ask more questions in the same manner, with many students engaging, thinking, and answering. This is an example of scaffolding a discussion.
Another way of inquiry questioning that I observed at this school was a lesson plan made by the students. Students were learning about the digestion system. The teacher let each students come up with a question that they wondered about the digestive system. The teacher compiled all of the students questions into a duo tang for each of the students to have. The the questions were organized as “Essential to know, Important to know, and Extra”. Each student had time to work with books and iPads, and by the end of the period the students had answered their questions about the digestive system and learnt a lot!
The inquiry based cycle that this teacher used went like this:
connect/ wonder –> investigate –> construct –> express –> reflect
Finally, I observed another inquiry based lesson plan formed around students questions. The teacher let each student come up with any question/ topic they were interested in. Some questions were better than others for deep investigation, and some were too simple. However, the students will be given time to research their question more and some will find out that they may want to change their question (if it is too simple). The teacher is leaving all of this up to them! When the students form a good question they will then research it over many weeks, and share what they have learnt with the class. There is so much opportunity for autonomy here. The teacher even admits that the students wont be used to this and it may seem strange to them. The inquiry based cycle that this teacher wrote down for these students went like this:
make plan –> investigate/ research –> experiment –> show what you learnt –> share –> reflect –> ask more questions (and back to the beginning)