OBSERVATION #3: The language of questions.

Observation N° 3 was based on "The language of questions". Here, I observed a class of fifth graders from primary school who were revising the modal verb "can" to talk about abilities.
The teacher explained what the activity consisted of, each student were required to read comprehensively a story about the planets and after that they were supposed to reply orally to some questions related to it. I imagine the teacher's idea was to test their reading comprehension skills and work on the vocabulary and pronunciation. (Though they tend to switch to Spanish all the time)

As they all speak together, it was almost impossible for me to write down everything they say. Before reading the text, I could collect these questions:

1. T: Do you remember how we express ability in English?
-Con "Can".

2. T: Page N° X, is everybody ready to start?
-Yes, teacher.

3. T: Do you understand what you have to do?
-Yes, we have to read.

During the text, these are the questions I could collect:

4. T: Is it a story or an article? Why?
-I don't know, teacher.
-It's a story.
T: It is a story? (Reformulation)
-Si porque tiene dialogos y personajes.

5. T: Why that title?
- Because they can see the planets.

6. T: What happened in the text?
-Brian and Emily use the telescope to see the planets and the extraterrestrials.

7. T: Can we see the moon?
Yes, we can.

8. T: Can we see Mars?
-No, we can't.
-A veces podemos, teacher..

9. T: Can Emily see Mars? Why?
Yes, she can. She uses the telescope.

10. T: Can they see extraterrestrials?
-No, they can't.

11. T: Are extraterrestrials real? What do you think?
-They are real and they live in the galaxy!

12. T: Can Emily and Brian go to other galaxies? Why?
No, they can't. Because they don't have the technology.

13. T: What's your favourite planet? Can we travel to other planets?
-Jupiter is my favourite.
-No, we can't, teacher!

Having into consideration all these questions, I decided to classify them in the following way:

Yes/No questions: 2, 3, 7, 8, 10, 12
Short answer questions: 5, 6, 9, 12
Open-ended questions: 11,
Display questions: 1,
Referential questions: 4,
Imaginative questions/Opinion: 11, 13

Even though I can't find any pattern in these questions, I do find that the questions were all prepared to make students think logically and read carefully. What's more, most of the questions during the whole class were Yes/No questions, I suppose that's the correlation between question and answer. I feel they were all prepared to practise "Yes, .. can/No, .. can't". I would say they felt involved though challenged at some moments.
Using questions like these gives the students the opportunity to share with their classmates and teacher their thoughts, opinions and how they feel about some specific subject. In this case, I don't think children showed any difficulty with the reading since they found mostly all the answers. Most likely because it was a class where they were revising everything they had learnt and they were practising for an exam they were supposed to have the following week.
Nevertheless, I did could see that some of them required more time than others to answer the questions but that's normal, every student work at their own pace. Next time, though it is very hard, I would encourage them to speak entirely in English.

What I've learned: Before coming into this class I knew we could use questions as to start a discussion, to involve students or as opinion retrievers. After this observation, I realize teachers could use questions to guide the class and discussion in the direction they want them to. It probably takes a lot of experience but I believe it is possible with a lot of practise.
Apart from that, in this case, I felt students were more focused on answering questions rather than making questions themselves. As a teacher, I believe I would encourage them to ask as many questions as they want. It is important for them to learn how to get the information from others.