Transcript Slide 1

Effective Questioning
Autumn 2012
As teachers, we regularly use up to 100 questions within a sixty
minute lesson. So ... don’t just sit there ........
Task – before we begin:
Please reflect briefly on how much impact your questions have on
your students’ learning and then give yourself a ‘score’ 1-10.
Please make a note of your score by question 1 on the sheet on
your table!
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Low impact
High impact
A Starter!
A few ‘Range Finding Questions’!
Please refer to sheet on your table!
So ... Why do we
ask questions?
1. To keep pupils on task
2. To check knowledge and understanding
3. To help diagnose pupils’ difficulties
4. To make pupils think
Too Hard
Can do with encouragement
LEARNING ZONE
Ability
PRACTICE ZONE
Can do automatically
Too Easy
LEARNING ZONE
PRACTICE ZONE
Did you know that ...... ?
• Up to 30% of students regularly reply to questions with “I don’t know!”
• Students spend 90% of their time in a seated position.
• On average, students talk to each other for 1.7 minutes per hour.
• The range of questions we ask tend to have following pattern:
Managerial – “Who’s finished?” etc – 57%
Information/data-seeking – “How many legs does a spider have?” – 35%
Higher order/Thinking - “Why is a bird not an insect?” – 8%
• Questions tend to be directed to our students as follows:
To the whole class – 22%
To individuals – 66%
To groups of students – 12%
• A colleague was asked how many students he thought he had
involved in a Q + A session. He estimated 25 students. The number
was actually 8.
Did you know that ...... ?
• Our sequencing of questions:
‘Stand alone’ questions – 53%
Sequences of two or more questions – 37%
Sequences of four or more questions – 10%
Remember Ofsted ?
What does the school need to do to improve further?
Increase the proportion of teaching that is good and
outstanding by:
− providing additional challenge for the most-able
students to support the development of higher-order
thinking skills
− ensuring that teachers’ questioning engages all
students and demands their active participation in
lessons
February 2012
A ‘question-friendly’ classroom environment?
1. Our awareness of ‘the Ghost children’!
• No hands policy?
• The X-factor approach to delivering questions?
• The random name selector?
• Lollipop sticks?
• Allocate numbers to students?
2. Remember:
‘Wait time 1’ – immediately following your question before
eliciting a response
‘Wait time 2’ – immediately after receiving the
response/before you follow up
A ‘question-friendly’ environment (cont/d)
3. The Look-on-your-face-factor! The Respect agenda
- body language?
- tone of voice?
- dealing with put downs
- a question is an invitation, not an interrogation!
4. ‘Ping pong’ questions or ‘Basketball questions’?
- building on pupil responses or simply moving on to
the next question
5. Create ‘norms’, ‘systems’, ‘rituals’, ‘habits’ in your approach
to questioning?
- train the kids to recognise how we do business!
Our ways of working
1. Alone – listen to your teacher, quietly think, be
determined to respond orally or in writing.
2. In Pairs
...and ALWAYS
• Listen carefully
3. In fours
• Think things through
• Respond thoughtfully
4. Whole class
‘up and about’
Seating – make it fit your delivery
Teacher controlled cue card passing
6. Beware of too many cheaply-bought “Brilliants!”
- 50%
of answers are simply accepted without follow-up
- we tend to comment on the ‘correctness’ of the answer
and move on
- isn’t massive praise for recall-level answers a bit
disingenuous?
7. Kids should ask questions too!!!
-Do we build-in time for them to formulate questions?
- How do we exploit kids’ questions?
Pause for thought:
1. Our awareness of the ‘Ghost Children’
2. Wait time 1 and Wait time 2
3. The ‘Look-on-your-face-factor’/Respect agenda
4. ‘Ping pong’ questions or ‘Basketball’ questions
5. Creating ‘norms’, systems’, ‘rituals’
6. Beware of the cheaply-bought “Brilliants” – making students
accountable for their answers
7. Kids should ask questions too
Choose one element of the question-friendly classroom that
resonated with you and tell your neighbour why! You have three
minutes!
Devising our questions – Climbing Bloom’s (revised) Mountain!
Fat
questions
Skinny
questions
Devising our questions – think about LEVELS AND VERBS!
Recall questions test existing knowledge whereas ‘thought’ questions use
old knowledge to create new knowledge and ideas. (Ted Wragg, 2001)
Fat
questions
Evaluate/Create level – design, create, compose, assess,
appraise, defend, justify
Analysis level – analyse, infer, relate, support, break down,
differentiate, explore
Application level – demonstrate, predict, use, apply to new
context
Comprehension level – explain, translate, illustrate, summarise
Recall level – define, describe, label, identify, match
Skinny questions
Devising our questions – and not forgetting QUESTION
STEMS:
Question stem
1. What is this really saying?
Level – Recall? Comprehension?
Application? Analysis?
Evaluate/Create?
Analysis
2. Why do you think...?
Comprehension
3. How can you use a spreadsheet to .?
Application
4. Can you point to any evidence that ..?
Analysis
5. Where in (the novel) would you find ..?
Knowledge
6. What might this symbolise?
Analysis
7. Which is more important ... ?
Evaluation
8. Where is (the story) set?
Knowledge
9. How might you distinguish between..?
Analysis
10. Which type of (graph) is this?
Knowledge
..and how are our questions SEQUENCED?
Do we use our questions to
guide and scaffold pupils’
thinking?
..or do we engage in
a random wander?
Q3
Q4
Q4
Q3
Q1
Q2
Q1
Q2
And one final thought ........
As teachers, we regularly use up to 100 questions within a sixty
minute lesson. So ... Hopefully you didn’t just sit there ........
Task:
After having reflected further on how much impact your questions
have on your students’ learning and having given yourself a ‘score’
1-10.
What might you now need to do to move your score up one notch?
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Low impact
High impact