Jackie Acree Walsh’s Questioning for Formative Feedback Reflection

I enjoyed how this book often lined up with the program that I’m in right now and what
I’ve learned in recent years being in said program. This book often discussed the importance of
scaffolding questions and Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) which have been brought up many
times in my program and throughout my classes. I’ve gotten many compliments on how I
scaffold my questions and use said scaffolding for keeping students accountable when they say
“I don’t know” to some of my questions within my own lessons. However, I had not thought of
combining the concepts of SEL and questioning into one activity in the classroom before. I’m
excited to use this idea in the unit I’m in right now as I have students set up in pairs with study
partners which can be guided into questioning sessions and feedback for peers as well.

A few things I didn’t think about before were things like thinking time and peer
questioning. I really liked how peer questioning was made a flexible concept and I appreciated
how Walsh pointed out that teachers should be guides to learning, not the ones responsible for
student learning. This is a large piece of my ideology and philosophy about teaching, so I
appreciate that Walsh mentioned this in her writing. I liked how there were examples given
about using questioning for feedback both in student pairs and as a class while encouraging
students to give feedback to each other in class discussions in various respectful ways. I would
like to continue this as we begin the next unit which will be a reading unit if my mentor teacher
will allow me to teach a few more lessons. I find it easier and better to have these full class
discussions during reading units as students are reading the same thing and can discuss that
one piece of text more easily rather than trying to discuss various articles and topics of research
that they are reading in our current unit. When Walsh mentioned thinking time, a spin off of “wait
time,” I realized how much my students actually needed that. I noticed my mentor teacher using
this concept just the other day which seemed to really help students who don’t speak as much
in front of their peers in a whole class setting. Allowing students to not only wait before they
answer, but also remind them to actively think really helped their answers to increase in clarity
and depth as well.

I’ve watched pieces of this book benefit the classroom through both how my mentor
teacher uses it and how it has benefitted my own lessons. It was also very helpful to discuss this
book as a school and go more in depth with how these concepts could be used in various
classroom set-ups and subject areas. While I have only reflected on a few pieces to this book, I
hope to read it again soon after implementing some of the concepts I have already mentioned to
get a better understanding of what Walsh is talking about and to continue using these great
ideas in my own classroom in the future.