| PRED 356 | Methods
of Science and Mathematics Teaching
Chapter 2: Questioning in the Classroom |
1.2 Definition of the Question
What is the meaning of the Question?
A question is
In another words; A question is a statement that helps the students complete an incomplete (not necessarily wrong) idea about their environments.a sentence or phrase that asks for an answer or a problem or difficulty that needs to be discussed or dealt with or doubt or uncertanity.
A question that limits an answer to a single or small number of responses is called a convergent (direct or closed) question. The learner has previously read or heard the answer and so has only to recall certain facts.Convergent Questions Divergent Questions
- (Teacher explained the equation or similar to this before.)
Does anyone know for what reason the “x” stand for in the equation ?- (The forces on the pendulum were explained by the teacher in the last lecturing)
Who can show the forces on the pendulum?A question that encourages a general or open response is the divergent (indirect or open) question. The question has various possible interpretations and alternative meanings. It encourages more thinking and problem solving by requiring the learner to use personal sources of knowledge to actively construct her or his own interpretations. Example:
- (When you are presenting the graphs of the irrational function, you are asking students)
If you rotate a parabola around y- axis, what kind of figure would you obtain?
If a question is convergent (or divergent), is it convergent (or divergent) all the time?
The same question can be convergent under one set of circumtances and divergent under another.
Suppose you ask a student to decide or evaluate, according to a set of criteria, which households products exhibits characteristics of the square and rectangle. If student only recall products from previously memorized list, then the question is convergent.
But if the student has never seen such a list and must analyze the physical properties of products, then it is divergent.
Essential Subsidiary Hypothetical Telling Planning Organizing Irreverent Sorting & Siftling Clarification Strategic Elaborating Unanswerable Inventive Provocative Irrelevant Irreverent
These are questions which touch our hearts and souls. They are central to our lives and central to our learning materials. They help to define what it means to be human.
Most important thought will center on such essential questions.What does it mean to be a good friend? What kind of friend shall I be? What does a quadratic equation represent for from our lives? What is the basic figure in the real world? How should I cope with a real problem?
These are questions which combine to help us build answers to our essential questions. Big questions caused families of smaller questions to be started which lead to insight. The more skilful we and our students become at formulating and then categorizing subsidiary questions, the more success we will have constructing new knowledge.Essential Question
Best way to involve students in the use of e-mail?
Subsidiary QuestionsPotential benefits? Worst that can happen? Obstacles which must be overcome? Available resources?, Sufficient resources?, Additional resources? Good models? How prepare students and parents?
These are questions designed to explore possibilities and to test relationships and especially helpful when trying to decide between a number of choices or when trying to solve a problem.
They are useful when we want to see if our hunches, our suppositions and our hypotheses have any merit. They usually project a theory or an option out into the future, wondering what might happen if . . .Suppose the earth had no moon. Suppose the coefficient “a” was negative What would be if the Greece had won the Inonu Wars?
They lead us (like a smart bomb) right to the target. They are built with such precision that they provide sorting and sifting during the gathering or discovery process. They focus on the investigation so that we gather only the very specific evidence and information we require, only those facts which "cast light upon" or illuminate the main question at hand.Suppose the students solve an age problem
How will be the age difference changing between mother and child across the years?
They lift us above the action of the moment and require that we think about how we will structure our search, where we will look and what resources we might use such as time and information.
Teachers or students make the mistake of looking at the nearest point to themselves. They have trouble seeing the forest, so close do they stand to the pine needles. The effective teacher develops a plan of action in response to Planning Questions like these:
Sources
Who has done the best work on this subject?, Which medium (Internet, CD-ROM, electronic periodical collection, scholarly book, etc.) is likely to provide the most reliable and relevant information with optimal efficiency?
Sequence
What is the best way to organize these tasks over time?, How much time is available?, Which tasks come first, and then . . .?, Which tasks depend upon others or cannot be completed until others are finished?
Pacing
How long does it take to complete each of the tasks required?, How much time can be applied to each task?, Do some tasks require more care and attention than others?
They make it possible to structure our findings into categories which will allow us to construct meaning. Without these structures we suffer from mish mash. The less structure we create in the beginning, the harder it becomes later to find patterns and relationships in the fragments or the collection of bits and pieces.
Example
(Teacher explain how to solve set operation problems)What will be the first you will do? How will you use the difference operation? Should we consider the set operation rule when we construct the Wenn diagram?