Judy Johnson: Teaching in the Trenches: Using Questions to Make Meaning
Designed primarily for teachers in the trenches, this session will demonstrate how I use questioning in my own classes to get students to start thinking for themselves.
When I was attending university, I never understood how my professors came up with their brilliant insights and interpretations of literature; I dutifully copied them down and regurgitated them nicely at exam time. I only learned to interpret poetry and essays and stories when I started teaching.
When I started teaching college, I wanted to show my students the process of analysis - a process of interacting with the texts, finding patterns, and from that, making meaning of the literature. To do this, I decided to demonstrate my method of making meaning: asking questions. My regular method of instruction in class is to ask students questions, so that they have to find the answers themselves. Sometimes I put them in small groups to discuss first, sometimes I put the questions to the whole class; usually I have my own response prepared if students are struggling, but sometimes I don?t even have the answer. The idea is for us - students and instructor together - to actively and immediately uncover a meaning of the text that has relevance and wisdom for the current set of students. My hope is, that in asking them the questions, in demonstrating my p. 3 method of analysis, they will learn the kinds of questions to ask themselves in order to discover meaning themselves.
This session will be a mock class in which we analyze a piece of literature. By the end of the session, we will have put the question-and-answer technique into practice to see how it works. The participants will be the ?students? for the session; however, in participating in the process of discovery, they actually become the instructors.
When I was attending university, I never understood how my professors came up with their brilliant insights and interpretations of literature; I dutifully copied them down and regurgitated them nicely at exam time. I only learned to interpret poetry and essays and stories when I started teaching.
When I started teaching college, I wanted to show my students the process of analysis - a process of interacting with the texts, finding patterns, and from that, making meaning of the literature. To do this, I decided to demonstrate my method of making meaning: asking questions. My regular method of instruction in class is to ask students questions, so that they have to find the answers themselves. Sometimes I put them in small groups to discuss first, sometimes I put the questions to the whole class; usually I have my own response prepared if students are struggling, but sometimes I don?t even have the answer. The idea is for us - students and instructor together - to actively and immediately uncover a meaning of the text that has relevance and wisdom for the current set of students. My hope is, that in asking them the questions, in demonstrating my p. 3 method of analysis, they will learn the kinds of questions to ask themselves in order to discover meaning themselves.
This session will be a mock class in which we analyze a piece of literature. By the end of the session, we will have put the question-and-answer technique into practice to see how it works. The participants will be the ?students? for the session; however, in participating in the process of discovery, they actually become the instructors.
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