Have I got a question for you: Chapter 5

Questioning facilitates comprehension and critical thinking and should be used by teachers in classrooms. Easy enough concept, right? It seems this would be the case, but according to Fisher and Frey questioning loses its effectiveness when the teachers do all of the questioning. Teachers rely on the IRE (initiate, respond, evaluate) cycle of questioning which is a teacher centered teaching approach. Teachers should include reciprocal questioning, higher order questioning and many different questioning strategies in order to model and 

Reciprocal questioning includes logos (logic), ethos (writer/writing), and pathos (emotions). These types of questions help students develop an understanding of arguments made by authors or speakers. This helped me in class validate the claims made by the speaker in the TED video.

Higher order thinking (HOT) questions are based on the levels of Bloom's taxonomy. This "balanced" form of questioning is just not that, balanced. The lowest levels make up 70% of all questioning in classrooms, whereas the HOT questions make up only 30% of questions. We as educators must incorporate HOT questions in order to help create successful adults.

There are many strategies explained the two that really interested me were the ReQuest strategy and SQRQCQ strategy. I was interested in ReQuest because it seems like it resembles a game of sorts. The taking turns being the questioner and the respondent makes me think of a game show. I really liked that Fisher and Frey demonstrate the effectiveness of the strategy with ELLs in a social studies class. Not only does this chapter emphasize the usefulness of these strategies with ELLs but also the use of this particular strategy in social studies seems would make it more engaging for the students. The SQRQCQ, or the survey, question, reread, question, compute, and question strategy also focused on ELLs and appeals to me for the main reason that is was specially adapted from the SQ3R strategy to use in math classrooms. I needed strategies such as this in school, especially high school, that would help me break down and comprehend math problems more effectively. This strategy will definitely help me in the near future while teaching math.

As we can see, teachers need to incorporate student-centered questioning in their classrooms in order to help create high functioning future adults. Teachers can do this by reciprocal questioning, HOT questioning and using a variety of instructional strategies in their classrooms.

Chapter 7: Notetaking and note making

            Some people would probably rather get teeth pulled than read a chapter on teaching notetaking. I am not one of those people. Personally, if I didn’t know a notetaking strategy that worked for me I most likely would have struggled in high school and would continue to struggle currently. After reading this chapter I realized that my notetaking skills could be improved especially after reviewing the “Notes evaluation criteria” in figure 7.4.

            One thing that surprised me was finding out that there is a difference between “notetaking” and “note making.” I always assumed they were one in the same. All of the types of notetaking styles were very interesting to read about. The style that caught my interest the most was the “Cornell” style of notetaking. This style peaked my interest so much that I actually did more research on the style and am really considering using this style to replace the style that I currently use. The part of this style that really grabbed me was how much more organized it looked (fig. 7.1) compared to the notes I take.

            Never, in my entire life, was I directly taught a strategy to take notes. I was taught how to copy notes from an overhead or fill in the blanks from a print-out I was given. I have always just taken notes in a similar fashion to how I copied notes off a projector, which results in an unorganized mess. We, as teachers, must teach our students a notetaking strategy if we expect them to be successful. This quote says it all to me, “better notetakers generally do better in school and specific types of notetaking produce better results (124).”

            I would have liked to a more in-depth reading that explained each type of notetaking style and how to teach each one. Much of what I read was a lot of in-depth scenarios depicting the use of notetaking styles in each subject area. This wasn’t a bad thing; I am just saying I feel I would have benefited more from the chapter if it focused on explanation versus scenarios. I did like the examples that were given in the figures because I was able to see how each type looked.

            While reading this chapter I realized two important things. First, there was and still is a lot of information I do not know about notetaking. Second, was the realization of the crucial importance of teaching students how to take notes. The question I leave with is, what is the grade appropriateness of teaching notetaking to students?