Podcast Reflection #7: Teaching Strategies for the Everyday Teacher--Answering (Irrelevant) Questions

In this podcast reflection, I'll discuss how I listened to a podcast from Teaching Strategies for the Everyday Teacher. This particular podcast focused on Answering (Irrelevant) Questions in the classroom. According to this podcast, there are three types of questions that a teacher might hear in the classroom. The first type are questions that are relevant to the topic and easy to answer. The second type are the questions that are relevant to the topic and a little more difficult to answer. The final type are the irrelevant questions that most teachers simply ignore and don't answer. If a student asks a type one question, give answer BUT don't imply that it was a silly question. You want students to feel safe asking questions because it helps you check where they are in the lesson. They then discuss many different strategies for answering these type one questions. After that, they discuss type two questions and how to answer those as well, including how to answer these questions if you don't know the exact answer. Finally, they explain how to respond to irrelevant questions and reasons why they might be asked in the first place. They also make the distinction between the student who might just be lost or the student who might be asking the question simply to get attention. The main idea of this podcast that they want the listener to walk away with is that every questions deserves some kind of answer. Overall, I really liked this podcast. It was short, sweet, and I feel like I'm walking away with tools I'll use in my future classroom.