The document provides guidance on strategies for getting students to ask questions in the classroom. It discusses the importance of teaching students how to pose questions to guide thinking and uncover complexities. Various techniques are described such as having students work in groups to generate questions for the teacher; using a question wall, think-pair-share, hot seating, question dice, and spending a lesson generating and refining questions. The 5 Whys technique is also outlined as a way to get students to ask why 5 consecutive times to develop deep thinking.

1. The answer is 64
What is the question?

2. Getting Students to ask the
Questions

3. Who asks most of the questions in
your lesson?
Why would we want to change that?

4. Higher order thinking
involves being able to
cut through and pose
questions that will
guide a line of thinking,
or uncover the
complexities of a
situation.
True independent
thinking and learning
involves being able to
research and
investigate from
scratch.

5. Just as we would model or
teach students how to
generate answers, we
need to do the same for
how to pose and organise
questions.

6. What questions
would you ask
about this image?

7. What?
Content? When? Descriptive
Where?
Origin? Source? How?
Why? Analytical
Who?
Prediction?
Which?
Evaluative
What if?

8. Ask the teacher
Working in groups, get students to
generate questions that they would like to
ask the teacher about the topic they are
studying. Each group can choose one
question that they can then pose and
have to select their best question.

9. Question Wall
An interactive tool for getting students to
pose questions.

10. 1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9

11. 1
Why?

12. 2
How?

13. 3
What?

14. 4 A
How?
Question about what
you have learned.

15. 5 A
Which?
Question about what
you have learned.

16. 6
What if?

17. 7 A
What if?
Question about what
you have learned.

18. 8
Who?

19. 9
Which?

20. Think Pair Share
Use the ‘think pair share’ structure to
scaffold the generation of questions by
students.
Do Share with
individually Do in pairs the group

21. Hot Seating
Hot-seating is where a pupil adopts the role of a character from
a book or a play, from a period in history, from another country,
or from a particular perspective. Students are put under a
spotlight and asked questions by the audience. Because he or
she is required to ‘stay in character’, even the most reserved
pupil will find this process more comfortable than you might
expect, but the planning of questions to ask others in character
is very very powerful.

22. Question Dice
As a plenary activity get students to roll a question dice – and
they choose another student or group of students to pose this
question to in the class. This works very well alongside the
‘phone a friend’ strategy where students can pass something
onto others in the room.

23. Spend a lesson …
Generating and refining questions, reducing and reducing them
until they get to one crucial question. Spend a good amount of
time reflecting on what makes a good question.

24. 5 Good Questions
1. Get students to share
their questions.
2. See how many Question 3
pairs/groups came
with the same
questions.
3. Group and order the Question 2
Question 4
questions.
4. Peer to peer In pairs
write down
questioning. 5
questions
you know
the answer
Question 1 to.
Question 5

25. 5 Whys
1 2
Q: Why are there Q: Why is the
volcanoes? earth’s crust
A: Because the thinner?
earth’s crust is A: Because the 1. Get students to ask
thinner in some crust is split into ‘why’ 5 consecutive
places plates which always times.
move.
2. This will develop a
3
Q: Why do the ‘deep’ answer and
plates always deep thinking.
move? 3. This will help students
A: sequence questions
5
and develop a line of
4 enquiry.
Q:
Q:
4. It is very very easy to
A:
remember.
A: