Using+questioning+in+the+classroom

More often than not, children in K-1 are seen as incapable of participating in higher level thinking. We see them as "babies" that need to be explicitly taught. There is a time and place for explicit teaching and implicit teaching. The educators feel they need to spoon feed the information to them and tell them what to think rather than letting them come to their own conclusions and understanding. Students at this age have background knowledge and abilities to connect that knowledge to new concepts. Teachers need to be willing to step back and allow those connections to take place. Children can process and analyze at this age. the students need to be given the opportunity and the educator needs to raise his or her expectations of the class. Establishing norms and modeling how the process should go early on, can assist a kindergarten class to have a meaningful discussion and discovery with the educator's role as facilitator prompting and guiding with questioning techniques.
 * How can high level questioning be used in K-1 classrooms effectively? **

According to Nolan and Francis, learning means getting pieces of information and
 * Traditional learning and teaching **

isolated skills, teacher gives the knowledge explicity to students, controlling

student behavior is the goal of the teacher, interactions between teacher and

student is where learning takes place, and thinking and learning skills can be

applied to different content areas (1992).

This method of teaching is limiting to the students. They are expected to sit like robots quietly in their seats never sharing an independent idea, but praised for the correct regurgitation of information that the teacher has presented. They do not get to discuss their ideas and thought processes with their peers because that would lead to a chaotic classroom, that is noisy and uncontrolled.

When I walk into a classroom like that, I wonder what the children are really gaining. What are they thinking? Is this really a means to add to their knowledge or is it merely a way for the teacher to feel that the class is controlled and in doing so learning can happen? That type of learning does not fit the needs of all the students. Yes, it can reach some but not all. The responsibility of the teacher is to educate all children and sometimes that requires easing up on the reigns and allowing "the chaos" to creep in.

= Example of a kindergarten questioning and discovery session =

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She does not explicitly state that Good Readers ask questions. She allowed them the opportunity to explore and discover in the activity just like they would in a book.