According to Chapter 5, designing and planning start by the use of essentials questions.
Having that idea clear, organization of classes, units and lessons come later.
If we implement essential questions in our classrooms, it will be easier for our
students to get a clearer understanding our our own lessons, contents and aims.
Essential questions will be beyond the all the matters we have been used to
dealing with. When we, as learners, tend to question things around us,
the knowledge we get through it becomes deeper and long-term.
It is a real truth that questions are a doorway for understanding,
comprehension and they activate our senses of seeing life in all different
aspects, such as learning, teaching and so on.
There is nothing wrong when we question things. In fact, we should do
it all the time, since we will become more critical and confident about
our own opinions, feelings, ideas and knowledge we are getting.
Questions were made to be answered! Go and look for them!
I agree with your point that we should question all the time. We should also teach our learners that their own questions are always acceptable, and eradicate the misconception that "if the experts do not have questions, only the foolish and ignorant do"
ReplyDeleteYou are so right! Students usually are not able to both asking and answering questions since critical thinking has never been seriously encouraged. Plus they have this crazy idea that their questions might be stupid
ReplyDeleteYes!!!!! It seems that only foolish people have questions to ask. If It were so nobody would have discovered anything!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI would be great if our students could not only answer our essential questions but also theirs.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion we are far away from that ideal situation; don't forget that our students are not really into the questioning/inquiring dilemma.
I think that most of us, I mean Chilean people are used to take things for granted.We never question our parents'rules or teachers' knowledge at school.Therefore questioning simple things when we grow up,like facts of life, is not a common practice in our daily routine.Critical thinking should be encouraged since early childhood in order to provide enough meaningful and interesting debate not only in the classrooms, but in our homes as well.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, students should use English rather than thinking about English. Especially if we are asked to use a communicative approach in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteI don't think English class is the instance for them to develop critical thinking...
Maybe it's me who is more a teacher than an educator...
I would like to add something to your discussion. In my opinion, we are also contributing to this critical silence in classes as we teach students to answer questions and not to make them really. They lack of structures to make questions because our instruction is not focusing on questioning (at least in English). I am not saying that teachers (including me) do not teach that part of grammar, but we are obviously not paying too much attention to it.
ReplyDelete