Here are a couple of teaching job interview questions about teaching students higher-order thinking and writing skills to help you prepare for your next teacher interview.
Have a look at these sample interview responses to help you tailor your response, including examples in your answer that will make your response more convincing in the teaching interview or when asked by your supervisor. It builds credibility with the interviewer.
How will you improve students’ writing abilities?
Here is an example of a response.
I am a big fan of peer editing and collaborative writing exercises to strengthen students’ independent application. The best way for students to improve their writing abilities is to give them lots of writing opportunities. In-class writing exercises, journal writing, creative writing, and collaborative writing allow students to explore the many different writing avenues through being prolific in their writing attempts.
It is important to provide students with the maximum amount of feedback that provides a venue for maximum learning. As correcting and grading writing is one of the most time-consuming tasks for teachers, it is a great technique for students to mark another student’s writing. Writing and evaluation are two sides of the same coin.
To grow as writers, students must learn to develop an editorial eye. Peer editing allows students to benefit from the writing process while the teacher remains the coach and facilitator.
Teaching students require patience, and understanding that students learn differently is critical to improving students’ writing abilities.
What do teaching students’ higher-order thinking skills mean to you?
When teaching students higher-order thinking skills, I emphasize Bloom’s Cognitive Taxonomy: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Always differentiate the instruction as needed; this includes providing support for students with exceptional ability.
To reach each of the higher-order thinking skills, I incorporate topic elaborating questions into worksheets and group discussions. These questions include: What is it? How does it work? What are its interesting characteristics? How do these characteristics change? What are these changes related to? What would happen if? What could be done about it?
When teaching students higher-order thinking skills, I model and re-model each skill, develop a framework to attach to each complex skill, gradually increase each skill’s complexity, scaffold each practice opportunity closely, and teach the skill in a low content context before applying content later to practice opportunities.
It’s important to review the framework’s structure frequently and review the skill frameworks using visualizations and strategies that involve multisensory approaches. Finally, once students have learned the skill, I teach them when appropriate to use each skill – meta-cognition.
Please share with us by commenting below how you improve students’ writing abilities and teach students higher-order thinking skills. How would you answer this question in a job interview?
