How is questioning a teaching strategy?

Questioning can be an excellent teaching strategy if used effectively. Questioning can thoroughly involve students in the lesson because they actively seek out information rather than passively accept it from the teacher. Students quickly become engaged through questioning because they begin the process by calling upon their prior knowledge and experiences. They stretch their critical thinking skills by researching information and coming to conclusions on their own. Questioning can help teachers review previous lessons, evaluate their students’ progress, and judge students' mastery of the lesson. Finally, using the questioning method is an excellent way to turn the classroom into a collaborative learning community.

In order to be effective, the questioning strategy requires time and an experienced teacher. This method can require a lot of time because students need to be given the opportunity to thoroughly explore the subject in order to form conclusions. Teachers need to learn how to ask questions that push their students’ thinking and motivate them to seek more information and ask their own questions. It takes a skilled and experienced teacher to use questions to guide and redirect their students toward the correct conclusions.

In order to find out how I could potentially use questioning in my future practice as a secondary English teacher, I found a video about Melanie Agnew, an English language arts teacher at a high school in Washington DC who used questioning to engage her students. It was inspiring to see how her students were so engaged in the learning process and created their own questions, and it let me see how questioning could become an integral part of an English language arts classroom, not just in an elementary or science class setting.

References:

Joyce, B., et. al. Models of Teaching, 9^th Ed. Allyn & Bacon: 2014.

Develop higher-level understanding through effective questioning. 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfEU5shbmbw