Guided inquiry is by far my favorite way to teach a lesson! Questions are such a good way to help students learn. It is amazing to me sometimes how a student will aleady know the answer to something but they still ask the question. My student that I am tutoring will ask me questions and in turn I ask him a related question and he ALWAYS figures it out. In my opinion students should always be taught through guided inqury.
         A past teacher that I had used this method with us and we absolutely hated every assignment until the end. We would fuss and complain how she just wouldn't tell us the answer and she only gave us hints in a round about way and it frustrated us to no end. The funny thing is that at the end of that class, I looked back and realized how interested and motivated I was to find those answers. I honestly learned so much from that teacher because of her teaching strategy.
        The section in the chapter that mostly caught my attention was the higher order questions. Although it has never been required of us to use blooms within our lessons, I have always tried to use questions that followed the levels of knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. My mother is an elementary teacher and this was just a little tip that she gave me. Throughout the few lessons that I have taught in a clinical setting, those questions have been very effective and beneficial to the lesson. Not only does it require students to think for themselves, it initiates discussion.

What are some questioning techniques or examples for a social studies lesson?

Chapter 7 Note Taking

Chapter 7 discussed note taking and note making. Note making has always been more beneficial for me. Note taking in general have always been a challenge for me because they are too much of a distraction. No matter how much I am trying to pay attention, as soon as I start writing, I lose track of everything else that is going on around me including the lecture. Note making on the other hand helps me organize my thoughts and highlight key points. The most effective method of note taking that I have ever learned was in math.  It was different than the mathematics note taking discussed in the book.  Mr. Williams used a method of note taking that was based on vocabulary. My Algebra 2 teacher in high school would require us to write out our thought process beside every problem. It was similar to the method in the book in that we folded the paper and organized our ideas on each side. But in the note taking method I learned, you worked out the problem on half of the paper and explained the thought process and steps on the other side. We were only required to do this on the first two test. I think the teacher was making a point by doing this because the note taking strategy was so effective that everyone and I mean everyone continued with this strategy throughout the rest of our high school math career. My social studies teacher on the other hand, would lecture and we would have to listen and take notes along the way in our own way. I absolutely hate this way. In my opinion, how do you know how to set up and organize notes if you have never been presented the material before. This method did not work for me as well as it did for Jeremy Merrill’s students. What did actually help for me was note making before class, then note taking during class. By reading the book, I could write somewhat of an outline and be ahead of the game by the time note taking took place. Basically this whole notes thing has been a struggle for me.

How can I basically eliminate the boring part of note taking for my students and encourage them to try to learn better not taking skills?