High Order Questions

The past couple weeks the elementary school I aide at have been doing state testing. Teachers and aides are not allowed to "help" the students on the tests, however we can read the questions to them and ask them questions to get their minds on the right track. It is important to be careful in what you say though because you are not technically supposed to be helping, just guiding them in the right direction or reminding them that they know how to do it and they must be nervous. High order questions are important to ask students when they are struggling but they really know the answers or how to do the problems. If a student is struggling you could ask them what do you need to do next (not telling them what to do but reminding them to think about it in a different way maybe). Reminding students of practice tests to think back to help them in the current test is also very useful. High order questions are important because they allow guide the student in the right direction while allowing them to do it all by themselves. The teacher and student teacher in my third grade class are very careful about the questions they use and that is important so as not to directly help the child when they are supposed to the work themselves. Overall, asking high order questions can be very key to students success.