T&L Questioning
- 1. Questioning
- 2. Objectives To develop teachers’ self-awareness and analysis of their own questioning techniques To identify key features of good questioning To enhance the planning for, and use of, questions To identify relevant skills and plans for professional development (related to questioning) which teachers can then pursue
- 3. Importance of questioning Questioning is a critical skill for teachers because it is: the most common form of interaction between teacher and pupil; an element of virtually every type and model of lesson; a key method of providing appropriate challenge for all pupils; an important influence on the extent of progress made; the most immediate and accessible way for a teacher to assess learning.
- 4. Purposes of questioning To interest, engage and challenge pupils To check on prior knowledge To stimulate recall and use of existing knowledge and experience in order to create new understanding and meaning To focus thinking on key concepts and issues To extend pupils’ thinking from the concrete and factual to the analytical and evaluative To lead pupils through a planned sequence which progressively establishes key understandings To promote reasoning, problem solving, evaluation and the formulation of hypotheses To promote pupils’ thinking about the way they have learned
- 5. Pitfalls of questioning asking too many closed questions; asking pupils questions to which they can respond with a simple yes or no answer; asking too many short-answer, recall-based questions; asking bogus ‘guess what I’m thinking’ questions; starting all questions with the same stem; It is easy to fall into the trap of:
- 6. pursuing red herrings; dealing ineffectively with incorrect answers or misconceptions; focusing on a small number of pupils and not involving the whole class; making the sequence of questions too rigid; not giving pupils time to reflect, or to pose their own questions; asking questions when another strategy might be more appropriate. Pitfalls of questioning It is easy to fall into the trap of:
- 7. Bloom’s taxomony of questioning Knowledge Comprehension Application Analysis Synthesis Evaluation
- 8. Effective questioning reinforces and revisits the learning objectives; includes ‘staging’ questions to draw pupils towards key understanding or to increase the level of challenge in a lesson as it proceeds; involves all pupils; engages pupils in thinking for themselves; promotes justification and reasoning; creates an atmosphere of trust where pupils’ opinions and ideas are valued; Effective questioning:
- 9. shows connections between previous and new learning; encourages pupils to speculate and hypothesise; encourages pupils to ask as well as to ‘receive’ questions; encourages pupils to listen and respond to each other as well as to the teacher. Effective questioning Effective questioning:
- 10. Ready for more? Use a tape or video recorder to record a whole-class question-and-answer session. Replay the tape to help you to evaluate the different aspects of your own questioning. You may find it useful to focus upon whether: – you asked too many questions; – you had a balance of open and closed, high- and low-order questions; – you encouraged opinion, informed speculation and tentative answers; – you handled incorrect answers effectively; – you provided thinking time. Begin to build key questions into your lesson planning. In a departmental meeting discuss how you might plan sequences of questions that build up pupils’ understanding of important concepts.