As we all know, a requirement for almost every classroom is to have our standards and objectives posted for our students to read and refer to during our lessons. Now, here’s my question: what benefit are these standards and objectives if our kids cannot read? What purpose do they serve? So in my classroom, we post them because we like to follow the rules, but instead of relying on those, we instead rely on classroom questions.
What Are Classroom Questions:
If you’ve seen any of our videos (Facebook or YouTube) of classroom lessons, you’ve probably heard our classroom questions. These are the questions I ask to get students to share what we’re doing, why we do something, etc. These classroom questions also help keep the lesson moving and keep the students focused on our routines.
Classroom Questions: Conversation Builders
See, here’s my logic: Instead of some written standards and objectives posted that my students are oblivious to, I want my students to be able to articulate what we are doing and WHY we are doing it. True story. And guess what? When adults visit our classroom and ask a student what they’re doing, they can explain the lesson or activity and they an explain why. This happens because of our classroom questions. These questions provide our students the scaffolding and language to be able to articulate their learning.
Morning Meeting
Our day begins with morning meeting. Our classroom questions begins with our morning meeting. As you can see in the image above, I’m asking the students what comes next and what the expectations are for morning meeting as well as why we do what we do. This keeps the expectations for morning meeting clear. The questions keep us in our routine and schedule. And the questions for why we do what we do helps students see the importance of each component of morning meeting.
Calendar Time
The questions being asked during calendar time reinforce the purpose and importance of a calendar and why we use a calendar.
Sight Words
The questions we ask during sight words are meant to reinforce the importance of sight words and the importance of practicing and learning sight words.
Literacy/Letters/Sounds
The questions being asked for literacy focus mainly on letters and sounds and why we learn letters and sounds. And HOW we learn. I want students to understand the importance of practicing every day so we can get better.
Carpet Expectations
We all know students need reminders of expectations and our carpet questions are a daily and constant reminder of those expectations.
For more information on the lessons and activities in this post, visit these posts:
