Learning Objectives:

• Discover and reflect on your own questioning

from TP1.
• Implement strategies for incorporating
questioning into TP2.
• Discover several questioning approaches and
strategies for the classroom.
• Understand the importance of questioning in
your pedagogy.
 Questioning is such a central skill that it can be
used as evidence across a range of Teachers'
Standards:

• TS1: providing a safe, stimulating environment - stretch,

challenge and engagement through questioning;
• TS2: using questioning to understand pupils' capabilities and
let them demonstrate knowledge;
• TS3: asking questions to address student misconceptions;
• TS4: questioning as an effective approach in teaching;
• TS5: using differentiated questioning;
• TS6: using questioning to assess, to feed back, to encourage
pupils to respond;
• TS7: teaching questioning routines, so that pupils can use
them to independently approach tasks;
• TS8: focusing on questioning as a CPD priority for yourself.
 Wragg’s (1993) study found teachers
commonly use three types of question:

Management-related, e.g. ‘Has everyone

What kind of finished this piece of work now?’

questions do you Information recall-related, e.g. ‘How many

ask? sides does a quadrilateral have?’

Higher-order questions, e.g. ‘What evidence

do you have for saying that?’

Wragg E (1993) Questioning in the Primary Classroom. London: Routledge.

 Closed questions have the following characteristics:
Open and closed v They give you facts
v They are quick to answer
questioning v They keep control of the conversation with the teacher
v They are easier to answer
v Can be answered with yes and no

• There are two main types of

question: closed and open. Open questions have the following characteristics:
v They are likely to receive a long answer
• Closed questions requires a v Opposite to closed questions
short answer, such as v They ask the student to think and reflect
remembering a fact. v They will give you feelings and opinions
v Control of the conversation can be given to the student.
• Open questions need
longer answers, and often
require the learner to
provide an opinion.
 Dialogic Teaching
Developed by Robin Alexander, dialogic interactions which encourage students to think, and to think in
teaching is a term that describes on-going different ways
talk between teachers and learners, which questions which invite much more than simple recall
leads to effective learning. answers which are justified, followed up and built upon rather than
If you discuss ideas with your learners, merely received
you can get a clearer view of what feedback which informs and leads thinking forward as well as
understanding your learners have about a encourages
topic, and put right any contributions which are extended rather than fragmented
misunderstandings. exchanges which chain together into coherent and deepening lines of
It helps the teacher more precisely to enquiry
diagnose students’ needs, frame their discussion and argumentation which probe and challenge rather than
learning tasks and assess their progress. unquestioningly accept
Dialogic teaching is not just any talk. It is professional engagement with subject matter which liberates
as distinct from the question-answer and classroom discourse from the safe and conventional
listen-tell routines of traditional teaching classroom organisation, climate and relationships which make all this
as it is from the casual conversation of possible
informal discussion.

Alexander R (2017) Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking Classroom Talk. 5th ed. Cambridge: Dialogos.
What does dialogic talk look like?
• Children share a common goal or purpose
• Children allow each other to speak
• Children ask questions in order to understand better
• Children paraphrase or reflect back each other’s words
• Children are prepared to express uncertainty or
tentativeness
• Children try to make their own point as clearly as possible
• Children explore differences of opinion
• Children give arguments to support their ideas
 How to recognise dialogic teaching
• When observing effective dialogic teaching you
might expect to hear:

vQuestions being used that support thinking

vPupils being encouraged to elaborate or add
detail
vBoth teachers and pupils challenging the
thinking of class members
vPupils being asked to give reasons, justify what
they assert and speculate
vPeople negotiating their position and changing
their mind
 AfL and Questioning
• The importance of teachers using appropriate questioning to support student learning is an
outcome of several research papers including research with AfL.
• Questions are the most common form of interaction between pupils and teachers, yet
research suggests that the majority are recall and comprehension - lower order questions
which do not require pupils to actively process information. It is only in active processing
that the pupil achieves deep level learning.
• Specific suggestions for improvement include an increase in ‘wait time’ and an improvement
in the quality of questions employed by teachers, such as implementing high-order
questioning to allow students to use higher-order thinking skills. On average, teachers wait
0.9 seconds after asking a question before taking an answer from a learner.
• Questioning should be used in environments where students feel free to share their ideas
and expose misconceptions without fear of giving an incorrect answer.
• Questioning is the key means by which teachers find out what pupils already know, identify
gaps in knowledge and understanding and scaffold the development of their understanding
to enable them to close the gap between what they currently know and the learning goals.
• In order to raise pupils' levels of achievement they therefore need regular practice in higher
order thinking - analysing, synthesising and evaluating. Focusing on the kinds of questions
we ask in classrooms and the strategies we use can help us achieve this.
 Good questioning is good teaching
Doherty (2018) described skilful questioning as “the beating heart of good pedagogy”
“Questions are an integral part of classroom life and essential to every teacher’s
pedagogical repertoire.
Questioning serves many purposes: it engages students in the learning process and
provides opportunities for students to ask questions themselves.
It challenges levels of thinking and informs whether students are ready to progress
with their learning.
Questions that probe for deeper meaning foster critical thinking skills, as well as
higher-order capabilities such as problem-solving.
Paramore (Paramore, 2017) identifies an imbalance of questions often found in
teaching, saying there is a dominance of teacher talk and an overreliance on closed
questions, providing only limited assessment for learning (AfL) information for a
teacher.
The issue then is how classroom questioning strategies can become more effective.”

Doherty J (2018) Skilful questioning: The beating heart of good pedagogy”. The Profession, June 2018. Available online:
https://impact.chartered.college/article/doherty-skilful-questioning-beating-heart-good-pedagogy/
Paramore J (2017) Questioning to stimulate dialogue. In: Paige R, Lambert S, and Geeson R (eds) Building Skills for Effective Primary
Teaching. London: Learning Matters, pp. 125–142.
 Student wait time (giving a brief period of time for
Pace and Timing students to think or reflect before answering) has a
positive effect on learning.

Brooks and Brooks (Brooks and Brooks, 2001) found that a

rapid-fire questioning approach fails to provide teachers
with accurate information about student understanding.

Typically, the time between asking a question and a

student’s response is about one second.

Cohen et al. (Cohen et al., 2004) recommend wait times of

three to five seconds for closed questions and up to 15
seconds for open-ended questions.

Brooks J and Brooks M (2001) Becoming a Constructive Teachers. Costa A (ed.). Developing Minds: A Resource Book for Teaching Thinking. Alexandria, VA: Ass.
Cohen L, Manion L and Morrison K (2004) A Guide to Teaching Practice. London: Routledge.
Bloom’s Taxonomy
Pupils need to have knowledge before they
can understand it and that they need to
understand it before they can apply it in
different contexts.
They need to be able to handle these "lower
order" skills (knowledge, comprehension,
application) before they can analyse and
criticise.
This is necessary before they can combine
different kinds of knowledge to create new
understandings, (synthesis) after which they
can then move on to evaluate, the "highest"
order.
Moving between these stages demands
increasingly complex thinking by the learner.
Bloom's is helpful when scaffolding
questions. If pupils cannot answer questions
of a specific type, the teacher can lower the
order to take them back to what they can do,
then build it up again.
 White hat thinking
De Bono’s Thinking Hats What information do we have? What is missing? What do we need? How do
we get it? What has the land been used for previously? How many people live
there? How will the water be transported?
Black hat thinking
De Bono's "Thinking hats" approach is an effective Do the conclusions follow from the evidence? Is the claim justified? Will the
way of getting pupils to ask questions from a plan work? What are the dangers of the plan? Will there be sufficient
variety of perspectives, again allowing teachers to drainage? Is a leisure centre really needed here?
assess pupils' current level of thinking. Red hat thinking
Questions may include: What do I feel about that decision? Is my gut reaction
yes or no? Do I want a building in the middle of this area? Do I think this design
is too modern?
Yellow hat thinking
What are the benefits? Why? What are the good things about having a leisure
centre here?
Green hat thinking
Questions may include: What would we ideally wish for? What alternatives are
there? What else could we do with the space? What about an adventure park?
Or some futuristic green houses?
Blue hat thinking
Questions may include Where are we now? What is the next step? Is this the
best way to decide? Was this a good way to go about making the decision?
 Planning for Questioning
• Planning key questions and embedding them early in lesson - often in the learning
objective is particularly effective. Record these in your schemes of work
• Clarify your learning intentions - link your key questions to them
• Plan a few key questions to use, perhaps collaboratively, or within your schemes of
work
• Extend the key questions with subsidiary questions to ask.
• Consider the techniques you will employ - e.g. asking the same child follow up
questions to probe understanding. Where will pupils need most "think time"?
• Analyse the answers you are given and decide on "follow-up" responses
• Make the questions a focus for recall
• Decide on the level and order/timing of questions. Stage them so that the level of
challenge increases as the lesson proceeds. Bloom's taxonomy is good for this.
 Strategies to improve the distribution of
your questioning

• Introduce hands down questioning

• Move about the classroom. Teachers seem to ask those pupils seated in a sort of
"shifting spotlight " in front of them By moving to different areas of the room you are
likely to ask a wider range of pupils.
• Address a question directly to a named pupil. Keep others involved by asking them to
consider what they could add/ whether they agree e.g. “John, do you think that
Macbeth really wants to kill the King at this point? Sam, do you agree? What evidence
can you find? Does anyone think something different?"
• Use the 'thinking time' pause after asking the question to consider who has answered
questions already. Try simple strategies like asking a pupil who often answers to select
two or three others to answer - thus keeping them involved.
• Get an observer to record on a tally chart where you direct questions in the room. This
can be very revealing about distribution in terms of location and gender. A pupil may
even be able to do this, and this may engage others in the discussion about who
answers and why...
 Strategies for extending pupil responses:
• Pausing (giving thinking time) - before and after asking, and
after response, encourages pupils to extend their answers.
• Not only do more pupils answer, they also add greater detail,
and pupils who have initially given an incorrect response often
self-correct if the teacher waits a few seconds.
• If you find it hard to wait you could try: - Suggesting pupils
have half a minute to share their answer with a partner before
feeding back. This also promotes confidence as it is a "joint
effort".
• Planning to use strategies such as "Think, Pair, Share" or
snowballing at key points for "big" questions.
• Plan to ask the question, move to another part of the room
and repeat it before taking any answers - "You are not allowed
to answer this question in less than 15 words...
Ten questioning ideas to try in the classroom
Ask the classroom. The
Ask the expert. The teacher
No hands up. Anyone can teacher displays a number of
In the hot seat. Students take puts questions to a student
answer, which avoids the written questions to
it in turns to sit in the ‘hot on a given topic, extending
same few students answering stimulate thinking about
seat’ and answer questions. this to encourage other
questions. pictures or objects in the
students to ask questions.
classroom.

Eavesdropping. When groups

Phone a friend. This is a Question box. An actual box
are working, the teacher
Think-pair-share. This allows useful strategy in which a has a series of questions in it
circulates around the
time to share ideas with a student nominates another devised by the teacher. Time
partner and respond to a classroom and poses
to answer the teacher’s is set aside at the end of a
questions to groups based on
posed question. question. The first student week to choose some to
what is heard in their
also provides an answer. discuss as a class.
discussions.

More than me. The teacher

Here is the answer, what is
asks a student a question and
the question? This is
deliberately cuts short the
deliberately back to front to
answer to involve another
encourage out-of-the-box
student to build on this
thinking.
answer.
 Some questioning activities and strategies
• A ‘special' time for questions in class promotes the notion that pupils are
expected to have questions.
• ‘Post It’ notes on which pupils write questions about the topic prior to the main
teaching input. They tick off questions as they are answered and ask about
anything not covered at the end.
• Modelling appropriate types of questions e.g. thinking aloud..."a really good
question at his point would be..."
• 5Ws – who? what? where? when? why? e.g. in response to a photograph, a
diagram, an account, a newspaper report…
• Hot-seating where pupils prepare questions to ask of a character e.g. Darwin
• Snowballing: pairs discuss, move into fours, fours to eights and then feed back.
(Allows safety - no one person is responsible for the answer.)
• Think, pair, share.