Page 212 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

184 Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students
Where students have more knowledge about a topic, you might wish to place them in an application mode immediately, such as by posing a problem, eliciting alternative solution suggestions and rationales, and then engaging the group in reflective discussion of these ideas.
Do not try to develop complete scripts for question sequences and proceed through them rigidly. This would not be possible, because students’ responses to teachers’ questions are only partially predictable. Nor would it be wise because teachers need to adapt their lesson plans to developing situations and take advantage of “teachable moments” that students create by asking questions or making comments that are worth pursuing. Nevertheless, an important part of goal-oriented planning is the development of purposeful sequences of questions designed to help students construct key understandings. Such planned question sequences are much more likely to yield thoughtful classroom discourse than the inefficient patterns of questioning that occur when teachers have not thought through their goals in developing a particular subtopic.
Certain aspects of questioning techniques can enhance the power of your questions for stimulating student thinking. First, questions ordinarily should be addressed to the entire class or group rather than to a single designated student. This will encourage all students, and not just the designated individual, to think about the question. Second, before calling on anyone to respond, allow sufficient wait time to enable students to pro- cess and formulate responses to the question. You may need to emphasize to students that you are more interested in thoughtfulness and quality than in speed of response, as well as to discourage overly eager students from blurting out answers, distracting their peers by saying “I know!”, or pleading with you to call on them. Finally, it is a good idea to distribute response opportunities widely rather than allow a few students to answer most of your questions. Students learn more if they are actively involved in discussions than if they sit passively without participating, and distributing response opportunities helps keep all students attentive and accountable.
Even if a discussion begins in a question-and-answer format, it should evolve into an exchange of views in which students respond to one another as well as to you, and in which they respond to statements as well as to questions. To conduct effective discus- sions, you will need to have your goals clearly in mind, establish a focus based on the big ideas you are attempting to develop, set boundaries, and facilitate interaction, but in other respects you are attempting to assume a less dominant and judgmental role than you assume in recitation activities.
If you are collecting ideas, record them for the class to see (on the board, a flip chart, and so forth) but do not evaluate them immediately. Once the conversation is underway, continue to participate in it periodically in order to point out connections between ideas, identify similarities or contrasts, request clarification or elaboration, invite students to respond to one another, summarize progress achieved so far, or suggest and test for pos- sible consensus as it develops. However, do not push the students toward some previ- ously determined conclusion (this would make the activity a guided discovery lesson rather than a discussion).
The pace of discussions is slower than that of recitations, with longer periods of silence between bursts of speech. These silent periods provide participants with opportu- nities to consider what has been said and to formulate responses.
Dillon (1988, 1990) has shown that teachers’ statements can be just as effective as their questions for producing lengthy and insightful responses during discussions. Ques- tions even may impede discussions at times, especially if they are perceived as attempts to test students rather than to solicit their ideas. Instead of continuing to ask questions,
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