Just the Facts, Please!

This is the first in a series of articles in which I will briefly explain how you can expand your student's thinking and understanding by asking appropriate questions. A lot of this can be done orally so you can put it to use immediately. To help you remember and use the concepts I'm presenting, I'll be using a teaching pattern in which I will...1. Present a concept2. Give an example of it3. Ask you a question that will require you to apply what you've learned 4. Let you know if your answer is correct Let's get started.There are six kinds of questions we often ask our children in order to check their understanding. These questions have often been represented by educators as a pyramid to suggest that some questions are harder to answer than others. Rosetta Stone Portuguese Version 3 Questions at the bottom are easier than questions at the top. While not a bad idea, I like to think of these questions as a series of steps, with the bottom step representing fact-type questions. These are the kinds of questions that dominate the tests you and I have used with our children over the years. These are the kinds of questions that, while often necessary, don't take our grasp of a subject to much more than a surface level. But, test publishers like these kinds of questions because they're easy to write, and we like them because they're easy to correct. And our children find knowledge-based tests unpleasant because they are often long, boring, and just plain mind-numbing.These questions often start with the following phrases:What happened when...List the steps for...Name the city where...How long is a...Who painted the...Locate the rivers flowing from...Write the formula used to solve...State the rule that governs...You get the idea. Being able to give the answers to questions that start like the above is evidence that a student knows something, but it does not mean he or she understands what they know.I learned something a little over a week ago when my laptop died. Actually two things. Make that three. First, to avoid being totally stressed out, backing up your data regularly is essential (my last back up was done in July). Second, history repeats itself (this wasn't the first time I had a hard drive in a computer fail) and I failed to pay attention. Third, I learned a new term: Terabyte. That's the storage size of the backup device that now contains the data my computer- tech friend was able to salvage from my laptop. So, to someone knowing the above, they would probably conclude that yes, I knew something (I had some facts), but didn't truly understand them, or at least act with understanding... In my next ezine, I'll give you my "three D's" of presenting facts intelligently so that you'll be an even more effective home school teacher.Thanks for reading!Curt Bumcrot, MREDirector, Basic Skills Assessment & Educational ServicesPlease feel free to forward this to home schoolers you think would benefit. Also, you have permission to copy this article to your blogs, forums, social network pages, or other websites.