Throughout my elementary and high school education, my job as a student was always to answer the questions provided by my instructors. Even while writing essays, my job was simply to answer the question provided and use evidence to back it up. However, this all changed when I entered college since some classes made me responsible for writing my own essays without having an actual question to answer. As a college student, I was suddenly responsible for understanding the complex disciplinary text assigned and writting my own essays based on my own questions and arguments. In the beginning, creating my own questions based on readings and answering these questions through essays was complicated for me because I was so used to simply giving answers and not questioning the text. This is due to the fact that in traditional classrooms, teachers often ask the questions while the students simply provide the answers. However, the questions that students are asked are often used to simply check for comprehension and often have a right or wrong answer. Although these type of questions might seem like a great way to check for understanding, in reality they do not help students think critically. Thus, as educators we must move away from designing questions to check for understanding and instead focus on creating questions that will help students understand.
The reading for this week indicated the importance of helping students ask meaningful questioning through a disciplinary lense. If students are able to ask meaningful questions they will gain a better understanding of what they read and can monitor their own thinking. Thus, as educators, we must help students look at the bigger picture and help them think like insiders of a particular discipline. This can be done by modeling our thinking process as we read and by asking students essential questions. This is due to the fact that essential questions can be used as bridges to connect the new material being learned to the student's prior knowledge and can even spark genuine interest. Asking our students essential questions is also important because they are arguable, which means that they require students to back up their answers and evaluate their understanding.
Additionally Buehl, mentions that students must be able to think in all six cognitive levels. These levels include creating, evaluating, analyzing, applying, understanding, and remembering. Thus, we must promote self-questioning taxonomies using specific disciplines. By promoting self-questioning taxonomies we can promote deeper thinking. Since these meaningful questions can guide students thinking and understanding.
Hi Angelica,
ReplyDeleteBuehl highlights the importance of questions. We see a lot of leading questions in class. These questions simply check for understanding. It is common to see leading questions with concrete answers where you are either wrong or right. Your personal example is that of leading questions if I understand correctly. Many students are used to simply answering questions to check for understanding. A good way to check for understanding is coming up with questions. If you are able to come up with your own questions and examples then you truly show that you are creating your own understanding of the material by coming up with problems that can arise. I remember I had a math teacher that would always answer my questions with a question. This was so frustrating to me but I now appreciate it. He was trying to make me question problems and not just simply look for an answer. By asking me questions he was leading me to create my own set of ideas and strategies. Deep thinking is definitely needed and I think of it like reflexive thinking. Deep thinking helps lead us to understanding and retention. I wanted to ask you how you would implement this into your classroom? For example, if my student were to ask me how to get the slope of a line I would respond with the question : what is the slope of a line? what does slope tell us? From there I would hope to really lead students to understand. I know this is a minor question but small questions can lead to essential questions.
Angelica,
ReplyDeleteWhat you mentioned about essential questions reminded me of what my teachers were like in high school and the teachers that I remembered the most were the ones that started everyday with one or two essential questions. Our objective everyday was to go through the lesson all while thinking about our essential questions for the day and by the end of the class, we were able to write an outline of a potential essay for those questions. I truly believe that this method that my teachers used helped develop my growth mindset because it allowed me to understand that critical learning and intelligence can be developed.
Also, I think that Buehl's taxonomies can be very beneficial to educators in helping students grow in their understanding. It provides a scaffold for students so that they know they are constantly learning and growing and that it's not such a huge jump going from reading and understanding to creating and analyzing.
DeleteAngelica, I think your analysis of the need for our students to have exercises in critical thinking is spot-on. It seems in our current system of education, we are creating task-oriented robots instead of those who are true creators. This emphasis on falling in line instead of thinking outside of the box is emblematic of our society, but the extent to which it has been propagated in our schools is rampant.
ReplyDeleteEssential questions are important, there are some things that simply every student should know in my opinion. But it is the duty of the teacher to allow for the student to explore their own unique, biased take on information to allow for growth.