How to encourage children to generate meaningful questions

In order to teach a skill, what strategies do we have under our belt? Which strategy works better? How can we gauge the effectiveness of a strategy?

Educators need to have many different ways of approaching a lesson. Knowing your students really well, will help you decide which strategy will work best. You will know it works best when you observe the children during that activity. Be observant. Are the students engaged? Are they interacting with one another? Are they focused on the task even when you are not in the vicinity? If yes, then the strategy and task are 'just right.'
If not, no need to panic.
Use your judgement and tweak it. You can even abandon it right there. It has to be meaningful to the students. Otherwise, you are wasting your time and theirs.

I am posting a video of a lesson in my class. Feel free to critique it. I love reflecting on a lesson. The strategy is familiar to many I am sure. But that's not the point of this post. Did it work well? How could I have made it more effective? It is daunting to listen to myself. I wish I hadn't said this or done that! But after listening to myself, I know I will try and not repeat those mistakes.

Topic: Natural Hazards and Disasters
Learning objective: Teaching my students how to ask meaningful questions which will help drive the inquiry.
Strategy: 9 posts-it Activity

My reflections:
When I told a group of students I know the answer to a question, that came out as wrong! I should have asked them if they could answer that question using logical thinking skills.

I should have stopped the lesson 5 minutes before 3 pm for a plenary session.

Next time :)

VisibleThinking

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