Various kinds of thinking can be taught in all subjects by the use of questions. Socrates had a method of always questioning his students instead of telling. Students get more involved this way. Continuous questioning teaches them to raise their own questions as well as question themselves. Balance this with teacher explanations. Questioning is to get learners thinking about what they already know and to find out the answers to what they don't.
Also when questions are asked, time must be given to answer. With truly difficult questions, a teacher can help to reason out the answer by the student thinking aloud or by finding out more information together.
COLLECTING QUESTIONS
Every teacher should have plenty of good questions on hand. One way to formulate questions to have a set of keywords that can bring out various kinds of thinking. This includes specific thinking skills (follow directions, compare and contrast, determining cause and effect...) and the typical questions used to develop them.
The simplest way has been to use the keywords called, "The Five 'W's' and an 'H'", namely Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? Plenty of questions are made from these.
Another way is to look for "seed questions". Seed questions means the parts of questions that can give birth to other questions. Some examples are: "What if..." "If you were given the choice, would you prefer....or....?", "Do you agree that...?", "What was (character, author, speaker...) getting at when he said...?"
This awareness of the essence of any question, as well as the kind of thinking it develops or displays, helps to form another question to use in any lesson. Let's say, for example, the selection is a poem about a snowy farm scene and a couple of the animal's there. One animal is wild; the other is domestic. Using the few seed questions given as examples above, one could form questions like, "What if this same scene were described in the summertime. What would change?" or "What was the speaker getting at when he said,'the laborer ox demands the fruit of all his toil,' compared to 'The fowls of heaven claim the little boon which Providence assigns them?''"
Formulate questions that would best draw out the objectives you intend for that particular lesson. Let's say one of your objectives is to sharpen visualization of what was read, but also to practice comparisons. Both the questions formulated above can aid that purpose.
The same questions formulated for the poem could also be used for a whole other selection With a little adaptation we could ask, for example, about the Bhagavad gita chapter 1: "What was Duryodhana getting at when he told Dronacarya to notice that the Pandava army was arranged by his intelligent disciple Dhrstadyumna? What babout his telling him that Bhima's protection of the Pandava's army was limited?"
Reading questions in text books and teacher guides is a good idea for finding good questions and learning to formulate your own. After a while you'll be able to see what categories of thinking they belong to as well.
GENERIC QUESTIONS
Prepared texts are especially useful for those who are time crunched and thus have no time to create their own questions. But what if there is a text that has no prepared questions or exercises, but you really want to use it? One way is to use an all-purpose set of ready-made questions. The following were taken from the front of a literature text by Christian Liberty Press, created for students to think about and analyze the material included:
Here's more questions that can be added to the above list. These came from the beginning of an Abeka teacher's manual:
1. Ask student to clarify difficult phrases. (For example, "He wrote with a round hand". He made his letters round.) Explain expressions that are confusing and, when possible, give a modern day expression which means the same thing.
2. Have a student retell an event or describe a situation in his own words. Clarify, or help a student clarify, any misconceptions they may have received from the reading content.
3. After reading a story, list the events on the chalkboard. Call on students to put them in proper order.
4. Ask questions that will provoke thinking:
a. Questions that put the students in the place of the character.
"How would you have felt?", "What should (the character) have done?", "Why?"
b. Questions that require deductive reasoning:
A passage says, “He pulled his muffler tighter and drew his heavy coat closer.” Ask: "What season is it? How do you know?"
c. Questions that involve finding the cause and effect:
"Why did this happen?", "What problem resulted from this action?", "Why?"
d. Questions that involve drawing conclusions:
"Does this story have a lesson for us?"
e. Questions involving parts of a story:
"Who were the main characters in the story?", "Describe Mr. Jones.", "What is the theme of the story?", "Describe the setting.", "What would happen if we changed the setting?", "What was the climax or the most exciting part of the story?"
CREATE YOUR OWN
You can think up your own generic questions to add, too:
COLLECTING QUESTIONS
Every teacher should have plenty of good questions on hand. One way to formulate questions to have a set of keywords that can bring out various kinds of thinking. This includes specific thinking skills (follow directions, compare and contrast, determining cause and effect...) and the typical questions used to develop them.
The simplest way has been to use the keywords called, "The Five 'W's' and an 'H'", namely Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? Plenty of questions are made from these.
Another way is to look for "seed questions". Seed questions means the parts of questions that can give birth to other questions. Some examples are: "What if..." "If you were given the choice, would you prefer....or....?", "Do you agree that...?", "What was (character, author, speaker...) getting at when he said...?"
This awareness of the essence of any question, as well as the kind of thinking it develops or displays, helps to form another question to use in any lesson. Let's say, for example, the selection is a poem about a snowy farm scene and a couple of the animal's there. One animal is wild; the other is domestic. Using the few seed questions given as examples above, one could form questions like, "What if this same scene were described in the summertime. What would change?" or "What was the speaker getting at when he said,'the laborer ox demands the fruit of all his toil,' compared to 'The fowls of heaven claim the little boon which Providence assigns them?''"
Formulate questions that would best draw out the objectives you intend for that particular lesson. Let's say one of your objectives is to sharpen visualization of what was read, but also to practice comparisons. Both the questions formulated above can aid that purpose.
The same questions formulated for the poem could also be used for a whole other selection With a little adaptation we could ask, for example, about the Bhagavad gita chapter 1: "What was Duryodhana getting at when he told Dronacarya to notice that the Pandava army was arranged by his intelligent disciple Dhrstadyumna? What babout his telling him that Bhima's protection of the Pandava's army was limited?"
Reading questions in text books and teacher guides is a good idea for finding good questions and learning to formulate your own. After a while you'll be able to see what categories of thinking they belong to as well.
GENERIC QUESTIONS
Prepared texts are especially useful for those who are time crunched and thus have no time to create their own questions. But what if there is a text that has no prepared questions or exercises, but you really want to use it? One way is to use an all-purpose set of ready-made questions. The following were taken from the front of a literature text by Christian Liberty Press, created for students to think about and analyze the material included:
- What is the main idea or thrust of the author’s writing?
- Who was the leading character(s) in the story?
- Who are the secondary character in the story?
- Is there a key paragraph in the author’s writings?
- Do you agree with the message of the author?
- Do you think that the writing style that the author used is effective?
- Was the main message of the author consistent with sastra?
- Describe the mood of the story, as well as your own emotional response to it.
- What purpose do you think the author was trying to accomplish with his story or poem?
Here's more questions that can be added to the above list. These came from the beginning of an Abeka teacher's manual:
1. Ask student to clarify difficult phrases. (For example, "He wrote with a round hand". He made his letters round.) Explain expressions that are confusing and, when possible, give a modern day expression which means the same thing.
2. Have a student retell an event or describe a situation in his own words. Clarify, or help a student clarify, any misconceptions they may have received from the reading content.
3. After reading a story, list the events on the chalkboard. Call on students to put them in proper order.
4. Ask questions that will provoke thinking:
a. Questions that put the students in the place of the character.
"How would you have felt?", "What should (the character) have done?", "Why?"
b. Questions that require deductive reasoning:
A passage says, “He pulled his muffler tighter and drew his heavy coat closer.” Ask: "What season is it? How do you know?"
c. Questions that involve finding the cause and effect:
"Why did this happen?", "What problem resulted from this action?", "Why?"
d. Questions that involve drawing conclusions:
"Does this story have a lesson for us?"
e. Questions involving parts of a story:
"Who were the main characters in the story?", "Describe Mr. Jones.", "What is the theme of the story?", "Describe the setting.", "What would happen if we changed the setting?", "What was the climax or the most exciting part of the story?"
You can think up your own generic questions to add, too:
- Who was this selection about? What happened?
- Did you learn anything new? What captured your attention? Why?
- Can you sum up the lesson in a couple of sentences?
- Is there something you have a question about after reading this? Jot it down.
- Is there something further you would have added if you were the author? Jot down any comments you would like to share.
- How is the lesson here relevant to your own life? Is it worth knowing about? Why?
- What did you learn about Krishna or Krishna consciousness? Or can this information be used for Krishna's service?
