Teaching and learning briefing questioning
- 1. Teaching and Learning Briefing Focus: Questioning Questioning is a vital instrument in a teacher’s toolkit. Careful and planned questioning can ensure that you are stretching your most able students whilst supporting the needs of the less able. You should be aware of your students’ abilities so when planning your lessons questioning should form an important part of this process. Target Questioning Target your questions appropriately and exactly for each student. Use differentiated question structures to help you to do this. Re-phrase questions for students if they are struggling. Knowledge – What is…? Comprehension – Explain / Identify… Application – Can you…? How have you…? Analysis – Why? How? Synthesis – How would you improve…? Evaluation – What is your opinion…? How effective…? If you would like your own copy The Blooms Question Prompter. Please email RebeccaLay@Chalfonts.org Pose, Pause, Pounce, Bounce This technique gets students to listen carefully to each other’s answers and engage with what others have to say in the class. Pose – Provide a question; ensure that you ask the students to remain reflective. Pause – Give the class thinking time to consider their answer. Pounce – Ask a student for his or her answer. This student must respond quickly. Bounce – Ask another student about their opinion of the first student’s answer to the question. (An alternative is to get the first student to question another student of their choice on this topic.) @TeacherToolkit Student Questions Getting students to write questions on a topic is a great way for them to consolidate their understanding and to help them to engage with the topic further. Introduce a topic and in pairs or small groups get students to produce questions of varying levels of difficulty. The students must be able to answer their own questions so they can test others in the class. At the start of a lesson or the start of a topic get students to record questions they have about the subject on post it notes / mini-whiteboards. Return to these questions at the end of the lesson or topic and hopefully they should now be able to answer them for themselves because of the learning in the lesson or they can ask a peer their question. Supporting students to understand what a question is asking Command words – practice, practice, practice. Match question to answer. If you can’t, why not? Make some answers quite similar so they identify what the different command words are asking them to do and can see the difference between what the different command words mean in reality.
- 2. Reflective Questions Before, during and after a lesson we should be asking questions of ourselves to reflect on the learning of our students. How is prior learning assessed? How is understanding systematically checked? What interventions are needed in the lesson? Why? Is the support on offer having an impact on progress? Are the tasks challenging? Do they match students’ needs? Do I have high expectations of all? Are all learners enthusiastic? Interested? Resilient? Engaged? Is teaching of RWCN exceptional? Are LSAs being used effectively? Is the homework set appropriate? Is the behaviour policy being applied consistently? Assertive Questioning Buzz groups work on a thought provoking question. The teacher asks individuals to give their group’s answer. These individuals are nominated by the teacher. The teacher gets a number of answers saying just ‘thank you’ after each, and perhaps ‘why did your group think that?’. The correct answer is not given away. The teacher then encourages the class to discuss these various answers, and to agree, and justify a ‘class answer’. Minority views are allowed, but the aim is consensus. Only when the class has agreed its answer, does the teacher ‘give away’ the right answer. The teacher reviews the class’s thinking. With Assertive Questioning: All students are thinking – “the teacher might choose me”. All students are talking and checking each others’ thinking – they need to agree an answer with its reasoning. Group members will be cross if one of their number misrepresents their group’s answer to the class. So peer-pressure increases participation. You get detailed and representative feedback on all the class’s thinking, and can eventually correct misconceptions before they take root. There is lots of thinking time. Students are usually very comfortable to give answers, as they are answering for their group not as an individual. You get the best representative feedback on understanding if you ask supplementary questions like: ‘Why did your group think that?’ ‘Did any other groups get that answer?’…’Why?’ ‘Has anyone got a different answer?’ ….’Why? (geoffpetty.com) Resources, ideas, advice and inspiration @TeacherToolkit @LearningSpy @tes https://pragmaticreform.wordpress.com/ http://makinglearnersextraordinary.com/ https://educationechochamber.wordpress.com/2013/05/25/about-the-echo-chamber/(see the right hand side) http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/oct14/vol72/num02/The-Right-Questions.aspx geoffpetty.com The Question Formulation Technique Improving students’ ability to ask questions, based on research by Dan Rothstein. 1. Design a question focus. (Teacher) 2. Produce questions. (Student) 3. Work with closed-ended and open-ended questions. (Teacher and group support in good question guidance) 4. Prioritize questions. (Students) 5. Plan next steps. (Teacher and students) 6. Reflect.(students asked ‘what did you learn?’ and ‘how did you learn that?’) http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational- leadership/oct14/vol72/num02/The-Right- Questions.aspx for more details