How do you like your toast?
4
Using questions
In Session 4 pupils investigate making toast for themselves, using three spinners to provide the specification. It is here that you can use questionning to help the children in each group to make their thinking explicit and to share their understanding of what they are doing and why. You can encourage the others in the group to listen carefully and then ask them to build on the answer.
It is important that you encourage the reticent child to take part. You can do this by asking them questions directly. It is important to listen to children's answers and comments and help other members of their group respond positively to them.
The end of the session provides you with another opportunity to use questions effectively. You will have noticed which groups and which members of the groups have performed particularly well during the session. You can target your questions at these pupils in the sure knowledge that with a little encouragement they will be able to answer well. This will increase their self-esteem and provide useful recapitulation and reinforcement for the rest of the class.
The sorts of questions that you can ask are:
- How can you get the toast to be dark brown rather than light brown?
- This will enable children to talk about the length of time the bread is in the toaster - What's happening to the butter when you spread it on hot toast?
- This will enable children to talk about melting. - How is this different to when you put it on cold toast?
- This will enable children to begin to think about melting points. - What happens to hot toast when you just leave it?
- Is cold toast as crisp and crunchy as hot toast? How could you find out?
- This leaves the way open for an investigation.