Questioning Double Journal Entry #12

Three things you learned.
1. IRE process mostly encourages lower levels of blooms taxonomy.
2. Characteristics of effective direct instructions
clear, purposeful, brief, natural, and adapted to the level of the class,
sequenced, thought provoking,
3. Perhaps rather than focusing on the communication system of the social institution of education, teachers should be focusing on the social implications of the communication structure of education.

Two things you found interesting.

A student who can provide an acceptable answer has not necessarily mastered the learning -- he or she has merely mastered the structure often, a student has figured out what the teacher wants to hear and repeats it to further the discourse, but has not necessarily internalized the knowledge or connected the "answer" to any larger context of meaning.

teachers typically wait one second or less for students to start a reply to their question before calling on anther student or supplying information related to the question themselves. Interestingly, in studies where teachers were asked to incorporate longer than typical wait times, the action led to "more active participation in lessons by a larger percentage of the students".

One question you have.
Should discussion be incorporated into each lesson? Or is it only right for certain situations?




Essential questions are more than a focus of a unit, by asking essential questions the teacher helps make the connection between school curriculum and issues that affect the students lives. By asking these questions students have something to relate new information to, and can make meaning from the topic.