John Mason article: reflection on questioning

I agree with John Mason that asking good question promotes inquiry-based learning. We want students to question things. For math, we should promote students to question a theorem on not only how it works, but also why it works. Some questions may be very challenging to answer, and John Mason suggested that teacher need to help students develop resilience and resourcefulness. Everyone will get stuck some time, and it is important to encourage students. Just like the 2-column problem we did in class, we should value our thinking process, even the mistakes and the wrong turns. As teachers do examples in class, we can comment on our own experience when doing the problem, what mistakes we made and most importantly what strategies we used when we get stuck. Resilience is especially important in math and by modeling the process, it will help student overcome the anxiety in doing math. Math is not just for geniuses, if you work hard you will develop skills to be successful in math.

 “Teaching by listening” is also very important. Questioning not only guides students through a problem, it also gives teachers feedback. Listening to what the students are doing rather than just for the answer, teachers will better assess students’ knowledge. Another useful teaching strategies is to ask students create their own problem. When students create their own problem, they have to more thoroughly think through the concept, and really understand each step. To challenge students to the next step, teachers can add constraints to the problems they are creating, and make them to think in a deeper level and applying the concept.  Lastly, I would be very excited to have students asking me challenging questions or even question that I don’t know. I might ask them to come in at lunch time, look at the problem together and see what we can do together. Asking difficult questions shows me that they are thinking in a deeper level and I have done my job in teaching them the curriculum, challenging them to inquiry, and let them advance beyond my knowledge.