Newsletter – 04 December 2020

The High Impact Teaching Strategy (HITS) I am going to outline this week is Questioning.

Questioning is used by teachers to engage learners, make links between learning and stimulate interest and curiosity. In addition, questioning provides opportunities for students to discuss, argue and express their opinions and hear different points of view. It also provides immediate feedback for teachers around student understanding and the effectiveness of their teaching.

The types of questions used by a teacher is largely dependent on the lesson learning goal and activity. For example, teachers may use questions to probe thinking and ask students to justify their opinions. Questions can also be targeted to elicit specific responses, unearth varied points of view, make predictions or to encourage discussion. Effective teachers use a combination of open and closed questions and strategically pose questions to develop student understanding. For Questioning to be most effective, teachers need to create a trusting and respectful learning environment in their classroom. Students need to feel confident and safe in order to share their opinions and points of view through meaningful responses and to pose their own questions for their peers. 

Here are some ways that you can use Questioning in the home to support your child’s learning:

• Ask your child what they are wondering when they are exposed to new knowledge and ideas?
• Be mindful not to give easy answers to a question from your child – encourage them to investigate and work out answers for themselves.
• Ask your child to reflect on their learning – what did they do well and what could they work on? Use these reflections to set new learning goals.
• Ask your child what other opinions and points of view there could be on an issue? Eg. what might Mum or Grandpa or someone who lives in the country think about the question?
• Try to pose open ended questions for your child or questions that don’t require a simple or yes/no answer. This encourages deeper thinking and synthesis.
• Ask your child questions that help them make links between prior learning and experiences. Eg. What does this remind you of?
• Remember to make sure that you value your child’s questions and they feel safe asking them. The last thing you want is for children to be too scared of making a mistake to ask something.

Next week I will talk about the High Impact Teaching Strategy of Feedback.