Tutorial 4

"Thinking provides the key that opens the door to understanding."

Insights Gathered

Eureka! So that’s how Socratic questioning is executed. I’ve been waiting 6 semesters for it to make an appearance in one of my pedagogy modules at the institute. It’s rather odd that not a single module that I’ve read in the last 6 semesters, covered Socratic reasoning. The video on Spiral Questioning was particularly impressive too. Click here to view Mindmap of video. Insights gathered from the tutorial can be viewed here.

I learnt from the video, how powerful a tool, Spiral Questioning was, and how it was imperative that the teacher makes the connection between the students’ lives and the topic being discussed, explicit.

Can't wait to try Socratic and Spiral Questioning during my next teaching practicum.

Coincidentally, I’ve observed that there are lots of overlaps with the content in today’s tutorial, with that in 3 previous modules. Just last week, the “CEM231 The Teacher & Society” lecture on thinking and reflection, covered most of today’s lesson on thinking. My 1st year Educational Psychology module “EED102 Providing for Individual Differences in Learning and Teaching”, covered higher-order thinking, during the lecture on Bloom’s Taxonomy. “CCL301 Teaching Social Studies in the Classroom” also dealt with EQs and higher-order questioning.

Nevertheless, it was certainly good to have had these familiar topics, dealt with in previous semesters, reiterated and augmented today.

Essential Questions of the Day

1. What is thinking?

2. How does thinking occur?

3. How do we teach thinking?

4. How do questions promote thinking?

5. Why teach thinking?


What I'd like to Know About Graphic Organizers and Thinking

Having read “EED250 Empowering Learners to Learn” and “ECE 221 Teaching Lower Secondary English, Reading and Writing”, which introduced several graphic organizers useful for language acquisition, 4 semesters ago, it’d be “fantabulous”, if the tutor could recommend graphic organizer websites and software, which would facilitate SS learning and teaching.