This document discusses various questioning strategies and techniques for the classroom. It provides tips on using questions to engage students, check learning, scaffold understanding, and promote a culture of learning. Some highlighted strategies include targeted questioning, hands up vs no hands up approaches, building on peers' responses, student-generated questions, learning objectives as questions, Socratic questioning techniques, and using questions to structure class discussions and written feedback. The document emphasizes using questions to challenge students' thinking and promote higher-order analysis.

1. You What?!!??

2. Continuum Line
• Where on the line would you put the following
statement? Be prepared to justify your choice.
Helene will manage to fulfill the brief she has stupidly set
herself.
AGREE
DISAGREE

3. No expert…
• Deconstruct this!
• Clip 1 (Hatim v Jackie)

4. Deliberate Practice
Lemov Quigley
http://www.huntingenglish.com/2013/03/03/becoming-a-better-teacher-bydeliberate-practice/
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had
practiced one kick 10,000 times.” Bruce Lee

5. Consistent effort. Review. Improve.
Deliberate Practice
According to Alex Quigley:
• Deliberate practice is not “mindless”
repetition.
• Instead, deeply reflective process, highly
rigorous and specific.
• Wait… Rigorous?

6. Deliberate Practice
1. Define time and
place.
2. Research your
evidence thoroughly
then define and
refine your focus.
Share with a coach /
critical friend.
3. Record your evidence
and reflections
systematically; honest
conversation with a
coach on a consistent
basis. Blogging
recommended.
4. Share, reflect and
repeat… and repeat…
New strategies need
embedding.
Theory
Reality

7. Why Questioning?
Why not?
• Why do we ask questions?
• What’s the impact on learning and behaviour
for learning?

8. • Engagement with the learning
• Checking learning
• Support/ Scaffolding
• Challenge
• Listening to each other, building on others’ contributions => Culture / Ethos
• Oral rehearsing prior to writing
• Thinking again: prediction, hypothesis…
• Thinking aloud (and allowed): analysing, reflecting, evaluating, discussing,
arguing…
• Normalisation of behaviour for learning
•…

9. Give them time!
Even better:
– 20 seconds – thinking time
– ‘Jot down’ time individually
– Pair / Share / Contribute
– TIMER = Good piece of kit!

10. No hands up vs hands up
The kid I always pick
on to start with
HANDS UP GREAT
FOR
YES/NO
POLLS
ETC
Targeted questioning
Differentiation
Challenge the
indecisive
Scaffolding
Don’t use as “Caught
you not listening”
Tough love:
No tangent
Insist on clarification
No ‘I don’t know’
accepted
Scaffold
Ask others
Ask kid to repeat
COME BACK
If it’s wrong, tell
them
Great for checking
they are listening
actively to each
other…

11. Building on others’ responses
Pose Pause Bounce Pounce
ABC Feedback
Takes time to embed! Keep practising until the
class gets better at it.

13. Where would you place yourself?
What will you do today to learn and improve?
Level 4
Giving 100%
Leading and
supporting others
Level 3
Giving own ideas
and building on
others’
contributions
Level 2
Being involved
a bit
Level 1
Listening but not
giving ideas

14. Students asking the questions
•
•
•
•
Picture stimulus
Quotation stimulus
Learning Objectives
Start of unit => determining what needs to be learnt,
keep record, tick off and add questions as you go along
(Question Wall idea)
• Possible methods:
–
–
–
–
–
Write down any question then categorise / refine / answer
Model questions
Question stems
Question matrix
Silent debate

19. Silent Debate and Question Matrix

20. Questions to make
them think…
WHAT’S
THE ODD ONE OUT?
Continuum Lines
and
Hierarchy Ladders

21. More starters / plenaries
• Pupils write down 5 questions and answers. Then they
either ask a question or say the answer. Pick another
kid. Keep going.
• Quickfire round of questions after a short read.
• Why game (More fun for the teacher – Keep asking
why. How far can you push it?)
• Anything with a wordcloud!
• Similarities and differences (comparison alley)
• What happened one hour ago? One day ago? What’s
likely to happen an hour/day/week later?
0
• Other suggestions please?

23. Learning objectives as questions…
…over a series of lessons

25. Basically, solid socratic questioning…
– Questions that ask students to clarify their
thinking / answers
– Questions that challenge students’ assumptions
and generalisations (Is this always the case? Could
there be an instance where this wouldn’t be true?
But if this is the case, what would happen if…?)
– Questions that demand evidence (How do you
know? Where in the text…? How can we infer/
prove that that’s the author’s intention? Why do
you say that?)

26. More socratic questioning…
– Questions that question viewpoints and perspectives
(Devil’s advocate – But this is not logical. How can you
assert that…? Let me refute this! Don’t you think
there is a counter-argument to be made? Did ALL the
characters agree on this point? Is this really what the
writer is trying to say? )
– Questions that lead to deeper analysis, looking at
consequences (How does x affect y? What’s the
implication? What’s the consequence?)
– Questions that question the question (Was this a valid
question anyway? Could we have answered a more
pertinent question? Why did I ask you this question
and not….?)

27. Questions as dialogue
• On-going classwork and marking
• …including feedback on essays: Asking students to
formulate questions on how something else could have
been included:
Teacher sets target: Can you include contextual information?
Student: How could we explain the fact that Curley’s wife has
not been given a name?
• Oral and written
• Collaborative groupwork:
– feed questions, possibly on post-its
– Hexagons for links but ask for links to be explained
– Other ideas please?

28. Your favourite questioning strategies?