Reasoning and Proof Article - Can Teachers Be Too Open?

Can open ended questions be too open ended? This is the question that a researcher by the name of Amy Parks set out to answer. When Parks was a teacher she said she used a lot of inexplicit open ended questions. This caused only about three of her students to answer questions all of the time. Inexplicit question provide a wide range of answers, this can be intimidating to students. Students are not sure if they are correct so a lot of times they do not want to respond to a question. Parks thought that it would be more beneficial to ask open ended questions such that are more explicit. Such as "how did you find your answer to letter D?" and opposed to "what do you think about letter D" ( Teaching Children Mathematics, 2009)
Park observed a young boy named Marcus. Marcus was very shy. Whenever he was asked a question and would answer, he would second guess himself. When Marcus would provide an answer, his teacher would ask "why?". This would cause him to second guess himself and think his answer was actually wrong. However the question "why" can be very beneficial for students to be able to explain their answers. By describing "why" they got their answer, students are showing that they understand the whole process and not just the final answer.
Through this article I learned many valuable strategies for asking students questions. A good way to get students involved is to attach a students name to the question, for example "Lauren, why did you use multiplication for number two?" As a teacher we do not want students to only come up with an answer. We want them to be able to come up with the correct answer and be able to justify how and why they got that answer. For example you want to ask your students "Why did you add 45 and 54 together to get your answer?" This way students will further understand how they got their answer.
Another strategy that I learned that I know I will use in my classroom one day is to start off with some introductory yes or no questions. These questions can be asked to the whole class for them to answer together. These types of questions can essentially "warm-up" some students who may be shy and not normally answer questions.
In conclusion I learned that you need to ask questions to your students that require them to justify their answers and thinking. As a teacher you do not want to ask students questions directly out of a book. You want to promote thinking and understanding of a topic when you are asking questions to your students. These strategies and ideas will be very beneficial to my classroom.

Parks, A. N. (2009). Can teacher questions be too open? Teaching Children Mathematics 15 (7),
424-428.