Chapter 7 Reflection

This chapter covers the idea of ‘effective questioning’ in the classroom. I found it really interesting because it covers such an important concept. The ways that students are questioned can foster their learning. The more inquiry that teachers’ use in their classroom can lead to more quizzical the students are. I think that both open-ended and close-ended questions serve a purpose in the classroom. Close-ended questions are useful in doing a review with the students because they provide specific answers. Open-ended questions can be useful to urge the students to think about the problem in a variety of ways.

Throughout the chapter, Bass goes into detail on how teachers can use the 5 E method of inquiry in questioning the students. He also discusses how teachers can respond to students. I found that section to be really interesting because there will be times that students ask/answer with odd questions in my classroom. I thought that “extending a students’ idea”(Bass 197) is a great way for teachers to “promote further inquiry”(Bass 197).

I thought that the air demonstration, at the end of the chapter, was great. It can be useful to promote inquiry teaching at a young age. I thought that it was a simple demonstration, and encouraged the students to question what was happening. Once the students began to voice their opinions, the teacher explained what was actually happening.

I found the last section to be extremely interesting. The part that discussed how cultural diversity can affect how students respond to questioning. The two groups that were discussed were African Americans and Native Americans. Bass states that these two ethnic groups are raised with different questioning techniques than Caucasian students. I really liked learning about the cultural differences in questioning patterns because that is not always thought of when teachers are completing a lesson. Most of the time when a student is not participating, some teachers will just think that the student is not interested. But, teachers need to be aware that there can be a variety of different reasons for students to not fully participate in class.