Barbara Bueno 80621290

ELED 4310
Professor Asing Cashman
November 3rd, 2020
Learning Environment Reflective Essay #2
During the first mathematics classroom videos that were focusing on the use of questions,
it was very noticeable the amount of engagement students had because of the questions that were
asked. The teacher would constantly ask students to answer questions purposefully, since they all
were used o guide the instruction and learning lead by the same students. The questions that the
teachers asked were usually reflective, where students had to think and analyze what they were
learning using their critical thinking for connecting past knowledge. Also, the questions that
were asked during all the videos, were purposeful because the teachers had the intention of
guiding the students’ thinking and for them to discover knowledge by themselves. The most
frequent type of response from students were always positive, students had no fear of answering
questions even though they were not so sure whether their answer was correct or not. This tells
us a lot about the expectations of student thinking. First, we can notice that students felt “safe” in
their classroom because they always showed confidence with their participation and the teacher
always acknowledged and validated students. Second, we can also tell that the student
expectations were high, since teachers always expected them to answer and participate actively
during activities. Although students were barely being introduced into a topic, teachers always
showed confidence on the students’ knowledge and how they could connect things cognitively.
This can also show how questions were always aligned to the learning objectives of the lesson
and the expected student work product. Two questions that I would always ask my students are:
How do we get that? Why did we get that? These two questions would help guide the student
thinking by having them reflect on their critical thinking strategies to solve a problem and the
reason of why are we solving it that way including the reason for getting that result.