Finding Ways to Help Students Answer Their Own Questions

Finding Ways to Help Students Answer Their Own QuestionsBecause making their own questions will be new to most students, they will need encouragement. You can help students feel comfortable asking questions if you create an environment where inquiry is not only accepted but also fostered. By modeling the student’s question and scaffolding process, you can shape students’ actions, interactions, and thought processes. Before admin discuss about finding ways to help sutden answer their own question.

A. Background

Teachers who find ways to help their students answer their own questions are teachers who help their students become more metacognitive – or knowledgeable about and controlling their cognitive resources. Research on metacognition focuses on what students know about their thought processes, what students do when trying to solve problems, and the development and use of compensation strategies (1). The ability to reflect on one’s cognitive processes and to know one’s activities while reading, listening, or solving problems has important implications for the effectiveness of students as active and planning learners. As an expert learner, you automatically monitor your understanding and adjust it to filter out irrelevant information and pursue additional information as needed.

One of the strategies you use is asking questions; as an expert learner, you know the types of questions that will be asked to get the information you need. Students’ questioning is an understanding monitoring tool and helps them focus on the main content and ideas. In addition, student questions at a higher cognitive level are necessary components for problem solving (2). Thus, in your role as an expert learner, teaching students to answer their own questions by asking the right questions is very important. Note that item # 2 correlates with eleven other “instructor method” items at 0.70 or higher. The strongest relationship is with item # 1 (displayed personal interest in students), item # 4 (showing the importance of the subject), item # 6 (made clear how the topic fits), item # 10 (clearly explained), item # 13 (introducing ideas stimulating ideas), and item # 15 (inspires students to set and reach goals).

Helping students answer their own questions is also related to eight IDEA learning objective items at a level higher than 0.60. Look for similarities in rankings on these items to assess your success in helping your students develop metacognitive and problem solving skills.

Finding Ways to Help Students Answer Their Own QuestionsB. Helpful hints

To help students answer their own questions, you must first teach students to ask the right questions for the right purpose. Show students that questions can be arranged according to type

information sought. For example, Bloom’s Taxonomy (3) from the cognitive domain provides categorization of thought processes from the simplest to the most complex; a good framework for asking questions at an increasingly high level of understanding. Giving students stem questions (4) will help them with this process. Other categorizations of questions (5) describe questions as input (requires the withdrawal of facts or derivatives from sensory data); process (requires an image of the relationship between data); or output (requires students to hypothesize, speculate, make, generalize, evaluate). After students understand that they need to identify what they want to know, they can then choose the appropriate questions to ask.

Because making their own questions will be new to most students, they will need encouragement. You can help students feel comfortable asking questions if you create an environment where inquiry is not only accepted but also fostered. By modeling the student’s question and scaffolding process, you can shape students’ actions, interactions, and thought processes. One way to start is to ask students to write questions before learning a new topic, doing a new assignment, or taking part in a new activity. Ask them to use the question bar to write questions at each level of thought. Use student questions to eliminate investigations, activities, or discussions. During this time, ask students to think about certain questions and look for answers through their interactions with the teacher and other students. After that, ask students to ponder the question they asked to determine whether the question helped them learn. At this time also, ask students to write new questions based on their previous questions and teaching and learning activities.

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The third way to help students answer their own questions is to use teaching techniques that promote active learning. This is often an inquiry-based method and includes, but is not limited to, case study approaches, debates, role playing activities, simulations, and problem solving activities. Through participation in these activities and other active learning activities, students learn to assume responsibility for their learning in identifying problems, asking questions, seeking information, and developing answers or creative solutions.

As indicated by the previous instructions, finding ways to help students answer their own questions means being the type of teacher who constructs the teaching-learning process to facilitate students by taking a more active role in their learning. Students who learn to ask the right questions will get answers that satisfy them.

C. Issues of judgment

To assess students’ ability to answer their own questions, you need to consider several aspects of the teaching-learning experience. First, you and students must be clear about the purpose of learning activities. In addition, the teaching strategies you use will contribute to your choice of assessment techniques. You and students must also agree that learning to ask and answer their own questions is an ongoing and formative process. Because you help students become more metacognitive, you have to get students involved in self-assessment. Ensure that students learn to ask questions in the context of content. Use checklists, learning logs, and dialogue journals to track student acquisition of self-assessment and questioning skills (8). For maximum benefit, pair this with other assessments of student learning to show the relationship of their questions to the acquisition of new knowledge and skills. When students see that asking and answering their own questions is directly connected to more and better learning, their questions are motivational.