St Pauls Way Community School'

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St Pauls Way Community School.

• Questioning

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The Jabberwocky

• Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
• Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
• All mimsy were the borogroves,
• And the mome raths outgrabe

• What were the slithy toves doing?
• How would you describe the borogroves?
• What can you say about the mome raths?
• Were the borogroves right to feel mimsy?
• How effective was the mome raths strategy?

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• We can use cues to answer simple comprehension
  questions. This doesnt neccesarily mean that we
  understand what we are doing or saying!
• Questions, the kinds of questions we ask and how
  we ask them are incredibly important tools in a
  teachers armoury.

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Aims..

• To consider importance, purpose and pitfalls of
  questioning.
• To provide examples of practical strategies which
  you can try out in the classroom
• To apply this to our own practice.

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What are questions for?

• They help teachers to
• interest, engage and challenge students
• check on prior knowledge
• stimulate recall and use of existing knowledge
  and experience in order to create new
  understanding and meaning
• focus thinking on key concepts and issues
• extend students thinking from the concrete and
  factual to the analytical and evaluative
• lead students through a planned sequence which
  progressively establishes key understandings
• promote reasoning, problem solving, evaluation
  and the formulation of hypotheses
• promote students thinking about how they have
  learned

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Common pitfalls of questioning

• Asking too many yes/no or closed questions
• Asking too many short answer, recall-based
  questions
• Asking bogus guess what Im thinking? questions
• Pursuing red herrings
• Dealing reflectively with incorrect answers or
  misconceptions
• Focusing on a small number of students and not
  involving the whole class
• Making the sequence of questions too rigid
• Not giving students time to reflect or pose their
  own questions
• Asking questions when another strategy might be
  more appropriate

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Effective questioning

• is closely linked to the learning objectives in
  the lesson
• is organised so the level of challenge increases
  as the lesson progresses
• uses group and pair work to match questions to
  the level of challenge needed to progress student
  learning
• uses a variety of types of question - closed,
  open, lower and higher order
• provides opportunities for students to ask their
  own questions
• allows space for students to listen to each
  others questions and answers as well as the
  teachers
• require an atmosphere where students feel secure
  enough to take risks

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TOP TIPS
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Be aware of and make use of Blooms taxonomy
The taxonomy is a useful tool to use when
thinking about and planning for learning because
the type of questions asked at each level,
especially the higher levels, aid the development
of critical thinking. Level 1
Knowledge Describe, identify,recall,label, who,
what, when, where? Level 2 Comprehension Transl
ate, explain, illustrate, summarise? Level 3
Application Demonstrate how, solve, try it in a
new context Level 4 Analysis Explain, infer,
analyse Level 5 Synthesis Design, create,
compose, reorganise Level 6 Evaluation Assess,
compare/contrast, judge, defend, justify
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TOP TIP 1Planning for questions (at all levels)

• When planning your lessons plan your questions.
• Ensure that you plan to ask questions which hit
  on as many areas of the taxonomy as you can.
• This will ensure that you ask questions which
  meet all ability levels as well as promoting
  higher level thinking.

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TOP TIP 2 Active review of learning

• Not "This is what we did yesterday but "What do
  you remember?" Some ideas
• The answer is 56. What is the question? The
  answer is ..
• In pairs, in one minute, three things you
  remember from last lesson? In pairs, you have 50
  seconds to remember any three words we used last
  lesson?
• Who will be the quickest table group to identify
  seven things from last lesson?
• Who will be the quickest to come up with four
  things that happened in the lesson yesterday?
• Write any letter on the board - who can come up
  with the most words that have that letter
  in/begin with that letter from last lesson? Extra
  points for the longest/shortest/one with the most?

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TOP TIP 3Get students to pose the questions

• Show an object/picture/piece of writing (or some
  other subject related text)
• Students work in pairs for one minute writing
  questions that they would want to ask about the
  source material.
• The questions are displayed/shared and students
  choose one for further discussion (they
  invariably choose the interesting open-ended
  question)
• Students write down questions to ask that they do
  not know the answer to.
• They join with another pair and eliminate all the
  questions they can answer jointly. They join
  another four and do the same. Eventually all
  questions are answered or the teacher is left
  with a few questions to look at with the whole
  class.

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TOP TIP 4 Think, Pair, Share

• THINK, PAIR, SHARE..
• Ask the question(s) or series of questions.
• Pair/Group the students the students and ask them
  to discuss/answer the question.
• Pairs feedback answers.