Questioning
As I sat in my room in 1986 typing DOS, on my Amstrad 464 with a green screen monitor (to protect my eyes) I felt like Mathew Broderick from one of my childhood favourites ‘War Games’. Fast forward to 2020, as a teacher with blended learning, virtual learning platforms, Teams, Zoom and interactive delivery… Twitter, Instagram… Facebook… Now we’re research informed, we have Networks of Excellence, Edubook coffee mornings, iPads, interactive boards… how times have changed!
Isn’t is strange how a virus can accelerate us towards a state of Defcon 1 (War-games reference) and then you’re asked to write a blog. A refection of practice, a moment of clarity, an example of something that worked or perhaps led to change and either improved your teaching or the skills, knowledge and outcomes for your children.
As I sit staring at the computer screen, less Broderick and more Bean, I ask myself… Questions… Questions… Questions… and then it dawns on me – it’s QUESTIONS! As a Drama teacher my weapon of choice will always be a question. To check; to focus; to enquire; to support, model, explain, feedback and to challenge. You can never underestimate the power of the question.
But do we and should we plan them? Classrooms and student responses are highly complex. If we want our questioning to be personalised, supportive and probing, it can be hard to see how you can plan every question. Of course, stem questions and other key questions can be planned in advance, but as soon as students start responding, the script often has to go out the window.
Making Every Lesson Count; Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby
I am reminded of when I started playing golf and if I don’t say so myself, my swing was pretty good. If I had lessons, it could be even better… Right? Wrong… I started to over think things, became more conscious of all the nuances of my set up, to the point where I lost my way, the swing deteriorated. So how can I relate this experience to the classroom? It comes down to considering the wealth and depth of information out there, and we, as practitioners, run the risk of focusing too much on everything and forgetting the basics.
And the most basic tool in the classroom, asking questions…
Some fundamental techniques you can employ to support Questions.
One of the best examples of this is when a student approaches me directly. I stop the class and ask them to repeat the question and say “Can anyone answer this question for me?” Not only is the question answered or the response offered leads to another question and the eventual destination required but vocabulary is reinforced, students hear a different voice and the answer supports one of their peers.
How do we provide examples for refection which is a significant aspect of my subject? I was struggling to engage students in responding and refecting to my questions.
Pre- created sentences starters that were laminated were created with differing degrees of challenge and these worked well. Broken into phases of the lesson, these moved from individual refection towards offering feedback and suggestions for improvement. The Scaffolded structure was then removed and when asked the same questions were asked, students began to offer far better responses using subject vocabulary. With our no hands policy, it has raised that anxiety in our students to be far greater as they have no chance of escaping being targeted by the teacher. These laminated questions and sentence starters were useful in providing time to think of a response, they were levelled to support student need and were on hand for students who wanted to challenge themselves in answering a more challenging question.
These of course are always used as a starting point and a follow up question leading to an independent response would be asked.
So I’d always suggest the setup in golf and the classroom is important. If I had any advice for those looking to develop their questions, focus on developing oracy. If they can say it, they can write it.
For further reading; https://researchschool.org.uk/durrington/news/questioning-from-a-distance/ (https://researchschool.org.uk/durrington/news/questioning-from-a-distance/)
https://researchschool.org.uk/durrington/news/questioning/ (https://researchschool.org.uk/durrington/news/questioning/)
D.Harper – Summit Lead Practitioner
Isn’t is strange how a virus can accelerate us towards a state of Defcon 1 (War-games reference) and then you’re asked to write a blog. A refection of practice, a moment of clarity, an example of something that worked or perhaps led to change and either improved your teaching or the skills, knowledge and outcomes for your children.
As I sit staring at the computer screen, less Broderick and more Bean, I ask myself… Questions… Questions… Questions… and then it dawns on me – it’s QUESTIONS! As a Drama teacher my weapon of choice will always be a question. To check; to focus; to enquire; to support, model, explain, feedback and to challenge. You can never underestimate the power of the question.
But do we and should we plan them? Classrooms and student responses are highly complex. If we want our questioning to be personalised, supportive and probing, it can be hard to see how you can plan every question. Of course, stem questions and other key questions can be planned in advance, but as soon as students start responding, the script often has to go out the window.
Making Every Lesson Count; Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby
I am reminded of when I started playing golf and if I don’t say so myself, my swing was pretty good. If I had lessons, it could be even better… Right? Wrong… I started to over think things, became more conscious of all the nuances of my set up, to the point where I lost my way, the swing deteriorated. So how can I relate this experience to the classroom? It comes down to considering the wealth and depth of information out there, and we, as practitioners, run the risk of focusing too much on everything and forgetting the basics.
And the most basic tool in the classroom, asking questions…
Some fundamental techniques you can employ to support Questions.
One of the best examples of this is when a student approaches me directly. I stop the class and ask them to repeat the question and say “Can anyone answer this question for me?” Not only is the question answered or the response offered leads to another question and the eventual destination required but vocabulary is reinforced, students hear a different voice and the answer supports one of their peers.
How do we provide examples for refection which is a significant aspect of my subject? I was struggling to engage students in responding and refecting to my questions.
Pre- created sentences starters that were laminated were created with differing degrees of challenge and these worked well. Broken into phases of the lesson, these moved from individual refection towards offering feedback and suggestions for improvement. The Scaffolded structure was then removed and when asked the same questions were asked, students began to offer far better responses using subject vocabulary. With our no hands policy, it has raised that anxiety in our students to be far greater as they have no chance of escaping being targeted by the teacher. These laminated questions and sentence starters were useful in providing time to think of a response, they were levelled to support student need and were on hand for students who wanted to challenge themselves in answering a more challenging question.
These of course are always used as a starting point and a follow up question leading to an independent response would be asked.
So I’d always suggest the setup in golf and the classroom is important. If I had any advice for those looking to develop their questions, focus on developing oracy. If they can say it, they can write it.
For further reading; https://researchschool.org.uk/durrington/news/questioning-from-a-distance/ (https://researchschool.org.uk/durrington/news/questioning-from-a-distance/)
https://researchschool.org.uk/durrington/news/questioning/ (https://researchschool.org.uk/durrington/news/questioning/)
D.Harper – Summit Lead Practitioner