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Have you mastered the art of questioning?
Why is questioning a skill well worth mastering? Simply put, asking the right questions at the right time can make your teaching life so much easier.
Skilful questioning can help you to:
- Gauge children's learning and understanding
- Identify and address gaps or misconceptions
- Adjust lesson pathways or teaching strategies
- Create opportunities for deeper understanding or exploratory learning
In particular, the information elicited from skilful questioning can help you make effective decisions when teaching. They will help you decide if you should you recap prior learning, adjust the level of challenge, offer targeted support or even adapt your longer-term plans.
Keep your questioning sharp with our helpful tips.
Incorporate Hinge Questions
Hinge questions are mini checkpoints in your lesson that indicate whether your class has absorbed key facts, skills, or concepts.
They should be quick and simple e.g. yes/no or multiple-choice questions that everyone can answer using hand gestures, whiteboards, cards or tablets.
Moreover, they should guide your lesson without disrupting the flow or taking up excessive learning time.
Offer wait time
Let your class know you will give them time to think before they respond. It’s a game changer for confidence and engagement and research shows that it leads to higher quality responses.
By offering wait time you minimise pressure and cognitive load. So children can process and organise their thoughts without feeling rushed, this means they will be better prepared to contribute meaningfully.
Research suggests the optimal wait time is 3-10 seconds.
Align strategy and purpose
The right questioning strategy allows you to make rapid assessments and optimise your children's learning. However, select hastily and you risk disrupting the flow and wasting everyone’s time. Been there? I know I have!
Asking children to create a mind map is fantastic for assessing prior knowledge and reviewing medium-term planning. However, it’s not the best choice to inform on-the-spot adaptations.
Pitch and sequence carefully
Unless your question is intended to initiate exploratory learning, generally it’s most effective to start with simpler, closed questions before moving to open-ended questions which tap into higher-order thinking.
If your questioning is for retrieval practice, consider the complexity and cognitive load involved. Research suggests that memory is strengthened when children can successfully recall at least some information.
Make inclusive adaptations
Questioning is most impactful when everyone takes part. So make adjustments: vary wait time, provide visual cues, incorporate movement or offer different response strategies. Recording your question on a replayable sound button can make all the difference for some children.
Anxiety also impacts hugely on children’s responses. So, lower the stakes rather than send them into flight or freeze mode.
We carefully build questioning into all of our schemes of work.
Energising questioning strategies that are perfect for any time of the year!
Asking carefully crafted questions is key for assessing children's understanding and steering effective teaching and learning. But, it doesn't stop there, choosing the right mode of delivery can supercharge children's active participation and engagement in the classroom, especially when energies are low!
Just as using movement and visuals can support children to process and retain their learning, those same cues can help them retrieve information from their long-term memory. Now is the right time to harness this powerful combination and move your questioning to the next level. Use these strategies to connect with your class, have fun and remember your amazing learning experiences.
Download our free Questioning Strategies Guide
1. Alphabet Soup
Write individual letters on the board and ask children to think of words beginning with each letter relating to their learning. These could be events, names, processes or concepts. Fast finishers can add other letters or you could even try to complete the whole alphabet as a class.
Great for: low-stakes retrieval quizzing and vocabulary building.
2. Concentric Circles
Stand your children in two equal groups, facing each other in concentric circles. Ask the children in the outer circle to explain a concept, event, or process to their partner from the inner circle. Then, rotate just one circle to switch partners and repeat. This offers children plenty of opportunity to rehearse and refine their understanding.
Great for: building comprehension and oracy.
3. Four Corners
Need a movement break? Allocate each corner of your classroom to a different question response and ask your children to move to the location that represents the correct answer or aligns with their opinion.
Great for: encouraging movement and sparking lively discussion.
4. Telegram or Tweet
Asking children to summarise information is a powerful way to gauge their understanding. Simply ask children to summarise their learning for a topic using a limited number of words or sentences, just like a telegram or tweet. Can the rest of the class guess the topic each child is tweeting about?
Great for: retrieval practice, selecting and synthesising information.
5. What's the Theme?
Encourage your children to identify the overarching theme from a group of pictures, words or objects. This can work well to cue and support children recall topics and concepts from across the year.
Great for: retrieval practice, conceptual understanding and categorisation.
6. Guess Who?
Make retrieval practice interactive with this twist on my favourite childhood game. In pairs, children take turns thinking of a person they have learned about this year - this could be a scientist, artist or historical figure. Their partner then asks a series of questions to work out who their chosen person is.
Great for: promoting oracy and critical thinking.
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