1. Assessment for Learning (AfL) Unit 4: Effective Questioning
Welcome to Unit 4: Effective Questioning
Questioning is an integral part of assessment for learning. It is closely connected to the other cornerstones of the Northern Ireland curriculum, such as:
Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities;
Personal Development and Mutual Understanding (at Key Stages 1 and 2); and
Learning for Life and Work (at Key Stage 3).
In this unit we’ll discuss what we mean by effective questioning, how effective questioning can benefit you and your pupils and strategies for putting it into practice.

2. Learning Intentions
know and understand that effective questioning is a powerful tool for learning;
be aware of strategies for effective questioning in the classroom; and
consider ways to generate pupils’ questions.
These are the learning intentions for this unit and its associated activities.

3. Some Starter Questions
Do you ask your pupils to come up with their own ideas and to think aloud?
Do you encourage your pupils to explain the reasons for their answers?
Do they have an opportunity to ask their own questions?
Is it okay to give a ‘wrong’ answer in your classroom?
Does everyone value everybody else’s opinion?
Before we begin, I’d like everyone to take a moment and think about your own classroom’s environment and atmosphere. How would you respond to these questions?
Do you ask pupils to come up with their own ideas and to think aloud?
Do you encourage your pupils to explain their reasons for their answers?
Do they get the opportunity to ask their own questions?
Is it okay to give a ‘wrong’ answer in your classroom?
Is everybody’s opinion valued by everyone?

4. Climate for Learning Risk-taking culture Community of enquiry
Commitment to learning for all
These questions, and their answers, are important because they all concern the classroom climate for learning. We must begin by thinking carefully about our classroom cultures, because establishing the right climate is a crucial factor in effective questioning – a climate where pupils feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and asking questions. Pupils will be more inclined to ask questions if there is a supportive atmosphere in the classroom.
We can establish a positive climate in our classrooms by (Click) :
Promoting a risk-taking culture
For pupils to take risks, they need to know that all their contributions are encouraged and valued and that making errors is part of the learning experience.
Is it OK to give a ‘wrong’ answer? Is everybody’s opinion valued in your classroom? By you? By the other pupils?
To encourage this, create agreed ground rules such as think time, valuing all contributions and standard conventions of talking and listening, and flag these up regularly.
Problem-solving activities can also encourage pupils to hypothesise and think aloud. It also illustrates the trial and error of the learning process for pupils, helping them to become more comfortable with making errors to reach conclusions.
(Click) Creating a community of enquiry and of independent thinking and learning will also help foster a positive climate. Supportive relationships, both teacher–pupil and pupil–pupil, are extremely important. They can help create an environment where you are part of the learning community as well.
You can foster relationships in the class by setting up collaborative ways of working and using flexible groupings.
Finally, (Click) we must demonstrate a commitment to learning for all pupils. We need to reinforce a shared belief that all children have the capacity to learn by emphasising progression in learning rather than performance.
This can help promote self-belief and personal satisfaction on completing tasks, because pupils can feel secure in coming up with their own ideas, thinking out loud and explaining their reasoning.
Keeping these things in mind, and using some of these approaches to create the right climate, can promote effective questioning. In turn, effective questioning can reinforce and help to develop and perpetuate a positive classroom culture.

5. Answering the Big Questions
Activity 1
Answering the Big Questions
What was the purpose of your questions during that lesson?
How did you respond to the answers the pupils gave?
Next, let’s take a few minutes to reflect on why and how we currently use questioning in our practice.
(Pass out blank sheets of paper.)
Working on your own, think about a lesson you’ve conducted in the past week. Then record your answers to these two questions on the sheet provided:
What was the purpose of your questions during that lesson?
How did you respond to the answers your pupils gave?
After you’ve recorded your thoughts, pair up with someone nearby and share your responses.
(Allow five minutes for participants to finish recording and sharing in pairs, then discuss everyone’s findings, recording the most common purposes on a flip chart.)

6. Why Do We Ask Questions? to find out what pupils know;
to manage and organise pupils’ behaviour;
to stimulate interest in a new topic;
to focus on an issue or topic;
to structure a task for maximum learning;
to identify and diagnose difficulties or blocks to learning;
to stimulate pupils to ask questions;
to give pupils an opportunity to assimilate, reflect and learn through discussion.
Research indicates that these are the most common reasons for asking questions; some are more conducive to learning than others. (Click, eight times)
How do they compare with our list?
When you look at the reasons that focus on the learning, you find that these can be simplified into three main purposes. These form the focus of effective questioning. They are …
(Go to the next slide.)

7. What Is Effective Questioning?
Framing, delivering, timing, soliciting and responding to questions to:
identify where pupils are currently in their learning;
expand and deepen the learning; and
inform planning for future learning.
So what exactly do we mean by effective questioning? What characterises effective questions? (Click)
Effective questioning frames, delivers, times, solicits and responds to questions in a way that reveals as much information as possible, which can then be put to use for these three purposes. (Click)
(Click)
It’s not necessarily about asking more questions. In fact, research shows that teachers ask a lot of questions in the course of a day … approximately one every 72 seconds, on average.
However, would it surprise you to know that 38 percent of these are actually answered by the teacher, not the pupils?
Given these figures:
How well do the questions we currently pose help us meet these three goals?
Is there anything we could do better or differently?
Undoubtedly, even the best of us could improve the quality of the questions we ask as well as the way we respond to the questions and answers we receive from our pupils.
And there are some very simple strategies available to help us do this.

8. Classroom Strategies: Ask Better Questions
Ask fewer questions.
Ask more ‘open’ questions.
Sequence questions.
Prepare key questions.
The first thing we can do is to ask better questions by planning more carefully and taking more care when framing our questions. We each need to consider:
What do I want my pupils to learn?
How will they learn it?
How will I find out if they have learned it?
We then must make sure that our questions reinforce the focus for learning and draw out pupils’ understanding of the learning.
To start, (click) we should ask fewer questions. Many of the questions we ask pupils are not meant to be answered; they are really instructions (‘Would everyone line up, please?), rhetorical questions (‘Do you think I didn’t see that?’), or answered by the teacher. The first step in asking more effective questions is to ask only the questions that you really want pupils to answer.
We should also (click) use more ‘open’ questions. Different types of questions serve different purposes. Some seek facts only and others encourage and extend pupils’ understanding. Where recall is required and you want to find out what your pupils know, closed questions are appropriate. However, when you want to know what they understand, use more open-ended questions such as Why do you think … Could you tell me more about … or even ‘closed’ questions with more than one possible answer, such as ‘What colour is the sky?’ These will extend learning and aid reflection.
You can also think about reframing questions to encourage more thoughtful answers. For example, rather than ask ‘What is 7 + 8?’, ask ‘How many ways can we make 15?’.
To encourage pupils to take risks, you could use ‘Have a go’ questions (perhaps deliberately difficult or open-ended) where pupils do not have to find the right answer but are rewarded for exploring options and sharing possible solutions.
(click) Sequencing your questions is also useful. Single, stand-alone questions rarely achieve the kind of outcomes we are aiming for. A barrage of closed questions can sometimes ‘close down’ the learning. The best questions look ahead and help move the lesson forward. By carefully planning the sequence of questions, you can expand the learning, encouraging pupils to the desired outcome or answer and helping them on their learning journey. For example, your questions could move from narrow to broad (specific to general) or from broad to narrow (general to specific).
Finally, (click) prepare key questions. Preparing three to four ‘key questions’ before a lesson or activity can help you to introduce the lesson and its learning intentions, structure the lesson, make links in the lesson and keep everyone on task. You can display the questions on prompt cards or in the form of a mind map.

9. Classroom Strategies: Ask Questions Better
Involve the whole class
Think, pair, share
Provide think time
Try no hands up
We can also be more effective in our questioning by asking questions better. This includes the way we ask questions as well as how we allow pupils to respond. (Click)
You should involve the whole class. If we want to promote a risk-taking culture, we need to ensure that pupils do not feel threatened.
Try addressing the group rather than an individual. You can engage the whole class by simply walking round the room while asking or directing questions. This can increase pupil involvement and it may also help you observe pupil participation and engagement. (Click)
Another strategy is to Think, Pair, Share. Pupils are sometimes intimidated by having to speak up in a whole-class situation. You can use this strategy to involve everyone. Here, pupils think about their answer, discuss it with a partner and then with a group. This can take the focus off the individual, improve self-esteem and give shy pupils a voice. (Click)
Giving pupils time to think is also critical to effective questioning. Research shows that teachers typically allow less than one second waiting time between posing the question and asking for the answer, sometimes by providing the answer themselves. By increasing that waiting time to three to five seconds, you can make a significant difference to your question’s effectiveness. Doing this:
gives pupils the vital time they need to order their thoughts;
ensures more pupils are likely to offer an answer;
results in fewer ‘I don’t knows’;
produces more thoughtful, creative and extended answers; and
benefits all children, no matter what their ability.
Make sure that your pupils know and understand that there is time to think, so that they do not feel pressured to answer right away. (Click)
Finally, to help you ask questions better, consider a ‘no hands up’ approach. When you ask a question and one pupil in a class puts his or her hand up, often everyone else in the class stops thinking or trying to work out the answer. By asking for ‘no hands up’, you can encourage all your pupils to stay engaged with the question for longer.

10. Classroom Strategies: Deal with Answers Productively
Use wrong answers to develop understanding.
Prompt pupils.
Listen and respond positively.
Effective questioning also involves how well we deal with responses from pupils. These are some strategies to help you:
First, use wrong answers to develop understanding. Part of our role here is to listen to the pupils’ responses. We need to listen for the answers we want, but not overlook other answers and responses that may reveal more about the pupil’s level of understanding.
We can put wrong answers to use by turning them into a springboard for improved understanding. The trick is to point out the error without saying ‘No, that’s wrong’ and at the same time steering the pupil towards a better response.
Also, prompt pupils to rethink and review what they have already discussed and/or give cues to guide them and nudge them in the right direction. For example, ask ‘Why do you think that …?’, ‘Could you explain …’ or ‘What about …?’. Remember, prompts do not always have to be verbal. You can use a nod, a smile or an encouraging hand gesture to prompt pupils’ answers.
Finally, always listen and respond positively to pupils who are genuinely contributing to the discussion. This can encourage them to take risks and volunteer answers rather than being silent because they are afraid to give the wrong answer.

11. Classroom Strategies: Generate Pupils’ Questions
Model questioning for pupils.
Give pupils opportunities to practise their skills.
Plan time for pupils’ questions and for dealing with these effectively.
As teachers, we ask most questions in the classroom (somewhere in the region of 50–70 percent more than the pupils). Encouraging pupils to ask questions is a key process in learning. It promotes pupil involvement, develops independence and helps them to work through difficulties (rather than automatically asking for help). It also develops pupils’ ability to explain things more easily and reflect on and evaluate their own learning.
We can encourage pupils’ questions by:
modelling the process, for example thinking aloud and framing questions. This allows pupils to develop the appropriate vocabulary for questioning and to understand the difference between a good and bad question. We can also provide prompts or frameworks for questioning as a useful aid to pupils. KWL grids or QUAD grids and other questioning frameworks are good resources for this (see Active Learning and Teaching Methods on the CCEA website).
We also need to give our pupils opportunities to practise their skills, for example by providing an appropriate object or stimulus. We can stimulate pupils’ curiosity and encourage them to ask questions. Alternatively, pupils can create questions about part of a text or topic as a means of finding a way into it. Pupils who come up with their own questions are much more likely to remember the answer.
Finally we need to plan time for pupil questions into our lessons. Our pupils will be more inclined to ask questions if there is a supportive atmosphere in the classroom.

12. Key Messages Establishing the right climate is crucial.
The classroom should be seen as a community of enquiry.
The role of questioner does not lie solely with the teacher.
Effective questioning performs three key functions:
– to identify the present level of understanding;
– to extend and deepen learning; and
– to inform future planning.
That concludes our training on Effective Questioning. To recap, here are a few key messages to take away with you.
(Click)
(Review these bullets and then move on to next slide.)

13. Key Messages The benefits of effective questioning include:
– improving the classroom ethos or environment;
– instilling the skills needed for independent learning; and
– supporting the objectives of Personal Development and Mutual Understanding (at Key Stages 1 and 2), Learning for Life and Work (at Key Stage 3) and Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities.
(Review this bullet and then move on to final slide.)

14. Planning for Questioning – Adapted from E C Wragg
Identify the key questions in relation to the learning intentions for the lesson.
Decide on the level, order and timing of questions.
Extend the questioning – thinking of subsidiary questions to ask.
Analyse anticipated answers and responses you might give.
Finally, as you think about developing questioning strategies in your own classroom, here is a useful mnemonic for planning.
(Pass out Handouts 1 and 2: Bloom’s Taxonomy of Questioning and Sequencing Questions.)
These handouts are for you to take away and review in your own time.
They can help to stimulate thinking when planning and formulating your own questions.