Strategy/approach
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Process
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Gains and benefits
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Thinking Time:
Consciously waiting for a pupil or class to think through an answer
(before you break the silence) e.g 15-30secs
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Provide time between setting the question and requiring an
answer. Sometimes alerting pupils to
the approach and the time available to develop an answer.
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Prompts depth of thought and increases levels of challenge. Ensures all pupils have a view or opinion
to share before an answer is sought.
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No Hands Questioning:
Using the ‘no hands up’ rule
Ref. AfL publication - Working Inside the Black Box.
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Pupils aware that those required to give an answer, will be selected
by the teacher. Teachers alert them to
this as questions are asked.
Linked to ‘thinking time’.
|
Improves engagement and challenges all pupils to think. When linked to Thinking Time, pupils share
ideas and ‘position’ their own views in relation to others.
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Basketball questioning:
Move questions and discussions between pupils
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Teacher establishes movement of ideas and responses around the
class. Builds on other pupils’ ideas
and comments. Accepts ‘half-formed’
ideas. NB not ‘ping-pong’
|
Engages more pupils. Stops
teacher being focus for all questioning.
Develops connected thinking and development of ideas.
|
Conscripts and Volunteers:
Using a planned mix of ‘conscripts’ and ‘volunteers’
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Teacher selects answers from those who volunteer an answer and an
equal amount of those who do not.
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Enhances engagement and challenge for all.
|
Phone a friend:
Removes stress to enable those who cannot answer to participate
|
Those who cannot answer are allowed to nominate a fellow pupil to
suggest an answer on their behalf, but they still have to provide their own
answer, perhaps building on this.
|
Encourages whole-class listening and participation. Removes stress and builds self-esteem.
|
Hot-seating:
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A pupil is placed in the ‘hot-seat’ to take several questions from the
class and teacher.
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Encourages listening for detail and provides challenge
|
Mantle of the expert:
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A wears the cloak of the expert to answer questions from the class.
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Builds self-esteem through opportunity to share detailed knowledge.
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Preview:
Previewing questions in advance
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Questions are shared/displayed before being asked, or the start of the
lesson.
|
Signals the big concepts and learning of the lesson
|
Pair rehearsal:
of an answer or a question
|
Pairs of pupils are able to discuss and agree responses to questions
together.
|
Encourages interaction, engagement and depth
|
Eavesdropping:
Deploying specific targeted questions
|
Listen in to group discussions and target
specific questions to groups and individuals.
|
Facilitates informed differentiation.
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5Ws:
Modeling simple exploratory questions to gather information
|
Teacher models the use of Who, What, Where, When and Why to set out a
simple information gathering response based on the information provided.
|
Encourages students to rehearse enquiry and comprehension, can extend
into reasoning and hypothesis.
Creates an inquisitive disposition and a thinking/self reflective
approach to learning.
|
Strategy/approach
|
Process
|
Gains and benefits
|
High Challenge:
Phrasing questions carefully to concentrate on
Bloom’s Taxonomy higher challenge areas
|
Questions must be pre-planned, as very difficult to
invent during a lesson. Focus
questions to address analysis, synthesis, evaluation and creativity, based on
Bloom’s Taxonomy.
|
Provides high challenge thinking, requiring more
careful thought, perhaps collaborative thinking and certainly longer more
detailed answers. For Able, Gifted and
Talented.
|
Staging or sequencing: questions with increasing
levels of challenge
|
Increasing the level of challenge with each question,
moving from low to higher-order questioning
|
Helps pupils to recognise the range of possible
responses and to select appropriately.
|
Big questions:
The setting of a substantial and thought provoking
question
|
Big questions cannot be easily answered by students
when the question is posed. They are
often set at the beginning of the lesson and can only be answered by the end
of the lesson, using all of the thinking based on all of the contributions to
the lesson.
|
These questions develop deeper and more profound
thinking. Big Questions are often
moral issues or speculative questions such as, Where are we from? How big is
the universe? What is the meaning of life?
They require extended answers and usually rely on
collaborative thinking and a personal interpretation of the information
provided.
|
Focus questioning:
This will help students to answer bigger questions
|
When students struggle to answer bigger or more
complex questioning, the teacher can model or lead the thinking by asking
Focus questions to lead the student through the steps of the thinking.
|
Develops confidence and the sequencing of small
steps in thinking and response. Allows
students to reveal the stages in their thinking.
|
Fat questions:
Seeking a minimum answer
|
Pupils are not allowed to answer a question using
less than e.g. 15 words or using a particular word or phrase. They must give an extended answer or make a
complete sentence/phrase.
|
Develops speaking and reasoning skills, the correct
use of critical and technical language .
|
Skinny questions
A traditional approach to Q&A asking everyday
questions with a fixed or specific answer
|
In its simplest form, students can answer yes or no
to a skinny question, or give a number or knowledge based response.
|
Challenge level is low in skinny questions that do
not seek and extended answer or reasons for the answer. Mostly knowledge and comprehension
based. Does not develop thinking or
reasoning.
|
Signal questions:
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Providing signals to pupils about the kind of answer
that would best fit the question being asked.
Teacher responds to pupils attempt to answer, by signaling and guiding
the answers.
|
The essence of purposeful questioning, moving pupils
from existing knowledge or experience (often unsorted or unordered knowledge)
to organized understanding, where patterns and meaning have been established.
|
Seek a partial
answer:
|
In the context of asking difficult whole class
questions, deliberately ask a pupil who will provide only a partly formed
answer, to promote collective engagement.
|
Excellent for building understanding from
pupil-based language. Can be used to
lead into ‘Basketball questioning’.
Develops self-esteem.
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