"Are my lessons that bad?"

Day 2 Session 3 (Thursday, 9 Oct. 2014, 2 – 3.30pm)

Classroom Language and Higher Order Thinking Skills by Andrew

Have you ever experienced the situation whereby your students did not give you the desired answer to your questions? Perhaps there were also situations when you did not receive any feedback at all accept a long awkward silence? Well, I will answer these two questions myself, yes and yes!

I have been wondering about this for so long and keep on asking myself “was the task too difficult?” and sometimes “are my lessons that bad?”. Finally, I got the answer, in Andrew’s ‘Classroom Language and Higher Order Thinking Skills’ class. At times we tend to ask the wrong questions. In order to get the desired responses, we really need to reconsider our questions.

From this class, I have rediscovered two types of questions: closed questions and open questions. Closed questions yield short answers such yes and no whereas open questions require learners to respond in more depth.  I am planning to ask more open questions to my students so that I can promote higher order thinking skills in my classroom. Instead of asking “do you understand?” or “do you have any questions?”, I would ask more questions like “what do you understand about…..?” or “could you explain the concept of…?”.

Allow me to briefly share with you some of the tips for effective questioning:

1.    Plan the questions to be asked in advanced

·         Prepare different types of questions for different stages in the lesson such as questions for set induction or questions to check understanding. We can always refer to Bloom’s Taxonomy in preparing the questions.

2.    Use more open questions in the classroom

·         Open questions will encourage more participation from the learners as open questions allow them to provide less-restricted responses.

3.    Avoid asking ‘guess what’s in my head’ questions

·         This type of questions might limit the learners’ responses just because they think we have the specific answer that we want from them thus limits their creativity.

4.    More ‘wait time’ please?

·         When given ample time to respond, learners would be more motivated to participate because they know that their opinion matters too!

5.    One question at a time

·         Allowing learners to focus to one question at a time would yield better responses. According to the Bloom’s Taxonomy, different (level) questions require different language style. If the questions are mixed up, learners might not be able to offer the desired response.

6.    Practice ‘no hands-up’ approach

·         This approach is useful in involving all learners in classroom as anyone might get ‘lucky’ and chosen to respond to classroom tasks. Learners would have to at least try to prepare a response.

7.    Don’t answer your own questions!

·         If learners know that a teacher will always give the right answer, they might just wait for the answer.

8.    Create an environment which learners feel safe and become  risk takers

·         Encourage learners to give answers that still need more work (by emphasizing that it is not wrong, since that is not the point here).

9.    Acknowledge ‘off beam’ answers by always finding something positive.

·         When learners come up with something which is not quite accurate, positively help the learners to improve the answer.

I really look forward to try these tips in my own classroom, which I am positive that most of it is applicable in our classroom, or at least in my own classroom. I am positive that with the application of these suggested tips, I will be able instill the idea “learning English language is not difficult, but interesting”.  

MOHD NAZRIE HASSIM

MERLIMAU POLYTECHNIC, MALACCA