Effective Questioning
After learning about assessment conversations in the Inquiry Science Pedagogy & Practice course, I made it a point of emphasis to look for instances where my CT was engaging in the ESRU cycle. Below I discuss one instance where this was observed:
Eliciting student thinking - (student 1) What is osmosis?
Student 1 response - Osmosis is the movement of water across a membrane.
Recognition - Yay, way to go! (student 2) can you add on to what (student 1) just said?
Student 2 - no response
Recognition - (student 2) what can you add on about the movement of water, where does it move?
Student 2 response - to an area of high solute concentration
Recognition - Yes!
Uses - What type of transport did we learn from today's onion lab that osmosis is?
Student 3 response - passive
Recognition - Right!
Uses - More specifically though, how does water move across the membrane via passive transport? What does that mean in terms of energy?
Student 4 response - It doesn't require any energy to cross the membrane
Recognition - Great job! So (student 5) put this all together and tell me what osmosis is?
Student 5 response - the movement of water to an area of high solute concentration across a membrane that involves no energy because it is a type of passive transport
Recognition - Way to go everyone, working together to describe osmosis!
After discussing this cycle with my CT, she noted that the response she was looking for to the initial eliciting student thinking question included the specifics about the movement of water, energy, and the type of transport. The initial response did include some component of the answer she wanted and served as a starting point where she utilized a variety of recognition (i.e., add-on with a prompt/scaffold, putting it all together, etc.) and use strategies (i.e., promote student thinking with how question, connect to previous learning, etc.). Ultimately, through effective questioning, my CT was able to guide the students to where she wanted them to go while at the same time engaging in an assessment conversation that provided insight at the whole-class level which she considered as she continued with the lesson.