Effective teacher questioning

Questioning is used by teachers not only to inform them of the understanding of their students, but also to improve their students’ learning. BrainWaves School Research Liaison Manager, Abbie Simpkin, discusses teacher questioning, a technique which can help teachers to engage their students by inviting curiosity and provoking thinking…

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The importance of questioning

Questioning is viewed as an essential pedagogical skill that requires practised knowledge. However, there can sometimes be an imbalance of questioning within teaching because of the dominance of teacher talk. This can lead to negative responses from students including disengagement. So how can questioning be used effectively in the BrainWaves lessons to instil a sense of wonder and encourage participation whilst differentiating between the different abilities of your students?

Dialogic questioning

Dialogic teaching, a technique which fosters the use of dialogue, counters the imbalance of questioning by using skilled questioning which extends the students’ thinking and in which students’ answers are built upon rather than just received. This technique encourages teachers to ask one question at a time, not to answer their own questions and ask questions to all students regardless of their ability or how likely they are to engage.

Why not give it a go? Here are some tips:

• Talk less, listen more
• Respond to the students and re-orientate them where necessary
• Encourage students to expand upon their responses by asking additional probing questions
• Ask questions simply and conversationally
• Encourage students to also ask questions
• Use silence as thinking time for students to gather their thoughts before answering
• Sequence your questions using an increasing taxonomy of questions
• Ensure that your questions are sufficiently open and divergentUse a no opt-out or cold calling strategy

Opportunities in the BrainWaves lessons

There are many opportunities to foster conversations about mental health through dialogic questioning in the BrainWaves lessons. Many lessons state specific questions you could ask to encourage this type of conversation. For instance:

• In the KS5 lesson on ‘Sleep and teenagers’, students are asked “What surprised you?” after watching a video.
• In the KS5 lesson on ‘Boosting your mood’, questions are sequenced “Which outcome do you think was produced by each activity?” then “Why do you think that?”

When asking these questions, enter into a conversation with the students, respond to their answers and even ask other students to respond to the answers too. This will encourage students to engage with the conversation and stretch their thinking.

Using techniques of dialogic questioning can lead students to natural inquisitiveness, deep insights and creative responses. It demonstrates to the students that they should all be engaged in the dialogue with no-one dominating or being overlooked. Responding to the answers given by students can add depth and breadth to the discussion and create further conversation points. It is a strategy that can support lower level students, encouraging them to participate and improve upon their answers in a conversational and natural way so that they feel supported but also confident in their increasing understanding. It can also support higher-level students by stretching and extending their thinking, and keeping them engaged and learning, even when the material might seem easy for them to understand.

About the author

Abbie Simpkin is a School Research Liaison Manager at BrainWaves, responsible for supporting schools on the BrainWaves Research Programme.  She was previously a music teacher at Key Stage 3-5.

Encouraging student discussion

The value of discussion should not be underestimated in the process of learning, especially in exploratory talk between students. Classroom dialogue contributes to a child’s intellectual development and educational attainment; students learn by verbalising, talking, discussing, and arguing. 

So, how can this important tool of student talk be used within the BrainWaves lessons to enhance the learning experience? School Research Liaison Manager Naomi French shares her thoughts.

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When goal-oriented discussions between students are set up with a meaningful conversation point, students can share their thoughts and ideas with their classmates and in turn develop deeper or new ideas that others can learn from. Hearing from other students can be useful in helping students to consider new, creative ideas and to clarify concepts. When this happens, a lesson can become an opportunity for collective learning where students build upon one another’s knowledge and deepen their communication skills. 

Student discussion is the bedrock of the BrainWaves lessons and actively encouraged as part of the learning process. Many of the accompanying lesson slides have questions that can be used as prompts for quality student talk and clips that can be used to generate discussion. There are also further suggestions within the Teacher Notes. You can also try the strategies below to enable students to access and engage with the lesson content.

Strategies to facilitate focused student discussion

‘Focused’ is the key phrase here as most teenagers love to talk and have no shortage of things to say! In fact, teachers may spend much of their time in lessons asking students not to talk to their friends since they can easily lose focus on the task at hand. Encouraging focused talk on the subject in hand is one of the biggest challenges when it comes to student-led activities, however there are a few strategies that can be used to make this job a little easier.

Write, pair, share

Many of us use the ‘think, pair, share’ model, but substituting writing for silent thinking can improve both the quality of the conversation and the number of students who contribute. As students write, I walk around, reading over their shoulders and writing things like, “That’s good. Say that!” on the papers of students. I can also see which and how many students are stuck, so I know if I need to add more scaffolding.

Timed question prompts

By displaying questions on the board that pupils can refer to or be guided back to if needed, discussion becomes more focused. By adding a reasonable time limit (and perhaps even a countdown style timer), the sense of urgency to complete the task is increased, thereby increasing focus. If you let students know beforehand how you will be collecting their answers – individually, as a pair, as a group, on post-its, with a nominated speaker – this encourages them to focus on the end goal, thus facilitating focused talk.

Hot topic

Ensure that students are engaged and interested in the topic before leaving them to work as a group. If they are itching to talk about it, the conversation is more likely to stay on track.

Roll a die

If you have a number of questions that you want the class to address in pairs or small groups, you can try displaying numbered questions (up to 6) and giving pupils a die: they can roll it and discuss the question they have rolled. Set a 1 or 2 minute timer and let them go!

Volleyball not ‘ping-pong’

As a teacher, the desire to direct, respond to and lead students (‘ping-pong’ teaching) can help drive learning, but it can also stifle creativity and engagement. To play volleyball, where pupils (rather than the teacher) respond to one another, is a great way to overcome this. It requires training the students in appropriate response techniques, but when the class are given opportunities to regularly practise this invaluable skill, it will not only encourage focused talk but also enhance their communication skills.

What if pupils do not input into discussions?

Encouraging students to talk in class (about the topic at hand, of course), can result in deeper learning, however, it can also mean that students who don’t feel they have anything correct, important or insightful to say or who are perhaps more shy, end up sitting silently and not reaping the benefits of the discussion. Coupled with this is the fact that the subject of mental health can be challenging to discuss and may make students feel uncomfortable. 

However, silence is different to disengagement, and this is an important distinction to be made, especially given the subject matter. You know your students best, and if they are silent in group discussions you can use this to judge if they need to re-engage or if they are simply actively listening to what is being discussed. Ultimately, when quality talk is facilitated, even those students who choose not to input into discussions are still benefiting from the rich language, discussion and thinking that is going on around them.  

About the author

Naomi French is a School Research Liaison Manager at BrainWaves, responsible for supporting schools on the BrainWaves Research Programme.  She was previously a year 6 class teacher and subject leader for PSHE.