Workshop Five Blog

Questions, questions, questions. Six year old's ask questions every other sentence. They are curious about the world all around them. This is probably my favourite thing about teaching first graders, especially as their English grows and the questions begin to never stop.

"How do you spell help?" "When is it lunch time?" "Do we have to stop science class now? We're having fun!" "When will we have the fire drill?" " Do you spell heart h-e-a-r-t?" "Can I use markers to colour?" "Will we get to go to the treasure box tomorrow?" "Do I turn this into the box now?" "May I go to the bathroom?" What does brave mean?"

All these questions make for lots of opportunities to ask them questions to help guide their learning.


1. After you have explored the Questioning Toolkit websites, what types of questions do you generally use when you teach students?

In science and reading classes, we daily use esstential questions to guide our discoveries and to set purposes for our reading and our experiment outcomes. My students are all on different levels of English language learning, so clarification questions are also a daily type of question used in my classroom by both myself and my students. Grade one is where children are transitioning from kindergarten and into formal schooling. The overall goal of this year is independence in completing common routines and procedures. Thus, we have a lot of telling and planning questions.


2. What kind of questions would lead students to think critically and at higher levels?

Elaborating and inventive questions are two of many types of questions that can help primary grade children to think critically. Strategic questions also help guide them to think at higher levels while providing structure for them to not become discouraged easily.

3. What kind of questions would complement the integration of technologies in your classroom?

Elaborating questions would really complement integration of technology in my classroom. It is a natural step from ‘What does it mean?” to “What does this mean in relation to me?” and “How can I use this effectively?” Sorting and sifting questions allow my students to determine a technologies personal relevance to their lives.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the word brave in Chinese is 勇敢[yǒnggǎn].