I gave myself a lot of threes. It's on a scale of one, three, or five if you haven't looked at it yet. While it does bother me a little on the inside to get all of those 3s, I get it. Three is proficient. What hurt more- I had to give myself a one on something :(
It was in a category that seems to be a completely necessary skill for a proficient teacher to master. Help me! I would love to hear advice from you on one or all of the following areas.
2.4 Questioning Strategies:
My deficiency area #1: "Teacher mostly calls on volunteers or high ability students." I often get the same few volunteers all the time and just go with it. Many times, students call out answers instead of raising hands. This means students who are not comfortable with speaking or don't know the answer usually do not get the chance to answer out loud.
Give me wisdom!! How do you call on non-volunteers and low-ability students in a non-threatening way? Do you have students raise hands to talk? Do they simply call out answers without raising their hands? Do you call on random students all the time? Do you have a strategy when deciding who to call on next?
My deficiency area #2: "Teacher rarely asks questions that are varied, high quality, and provide a balance of question types (ie. knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, creation, and evaluation.)" If I do ask good questions, it is on accident. On classwork assignments, I do think carefully about questions I ask and do nicely with asking varied level questions. However, during lectures, I find that verbal questions I ask seem to be on very basic understanding of content. Much of what I ask verbally is sort of on accident but with my lesson's goal in mind.Give me wisdom!! Do you write out questions you are going to ask the students during lecture in advance? How do you remember to ask them? Do you have some sort of system to ensure you are asking questions of varied levels? Have you read a really interesting book, article, or have examples of great question styles? If it's relating to the Chemistry 1 standards - bonus points.
My deficiency area #3: "Teacher rarely uses questions that require active responses (i.e. whole class signals, choral response, group answers). I try this occassionally. Students don't always respond! I'm wondering if I made a habit of this if things would change.
Give me wisdom!! Which 'active whole-class response' strategy works for you? How did you introduce it? How often do you use it? What do you do if a student doesn't participate
Please share in the comments below! :) If you are a student reading this, let me know your thoughts! Thank you!
