My students have grown to hate this annoying habit that I seem to have: whenever I ask a question and a student volunteers an answer, I immediately ask, "Why?" Students do not like this habit because they actually have to explain their rationalization. However, I think it is important to always ask "why?" because it makes students reflect on their own thinking processes. Also, I feel like this is good practice for real-world situations. As adults, people ask us to explain our ideas and thoughts all the time. If I can get the students to practice this skill in a safe, controlled environment, then they should develop the ability to explain themselves with clarity and ease.
It is important to ensure that questions asked in the classroom are not just "right and wrong" questions. I try to avoid these types of questions by always trying to engage the students in a full classroom discussion. If every student is allowed to be heard, then differing perspectives and ideas pop up in the conversation. If I can use student responses to yield more questions, I will certainly take that opportunity.
One way that I like to incorporate higher-order thinking is to ask the students why they feel a certain character in a text is behaving in a certain way. We look at the actions and motivations of the character to determine what that reflects about the character's personality. I will prompt the students by first asking what the action was - a right or wrong question. Then I ask the students to think about why that character might have performed that action - what were their motivations? Lastly, I always ask the students to infer what that action reflects about the character as a person. By following this three-tiered questioning strategy, I think the students can gain a deeper and richer understanding of a text while gaining the skills to interpret, infer, and make judgments for themselves.
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