Classroom climate: Effective Questioning
Teaching is “The art
of questioning”
Socrates
Teachers ask around
70,000 questions a
year
Questioning accounts
for up to 1/3 of all
teaching time
Most questions are
answered in less than
a second
Classroom climate: Effective Questioning
Where do chickens
come from?
Where do zebras
live?
What can cause a tree
to fall?
Why is sliced bread
useful?
Closed questions – require
little discussion and often have
a definitive answer, even if
there is more than one.
These type of questions can
rarely be used to encourage
collaboration and create a
“questioning web”.
Classroom climate: Effective Questioning
Which came first, the
chicken or the egg?
Are zebras black with
white stripes or
white with black
stripes?
If a tree falls in a forest
and no one is around
to hear it, does it make
a sound?
What was the best
thing before sliced
bread?
Choose one of the questions
and discuss in your small
group.
Write the question in the
middle of your paper and any
answers around the outside.
Any questions that are asked in
order to answer the question
should go on a post-it note.
Challenge: Create your own
question to discuss as a group.
What makes a good question?
• Decentralise – get students talking to each other and responding to
each other’s answers
• Consider using questions with no correct answer
• Make it rewarding
• Share the authority – encourage students to create their own
questions
Classroom climate: Effective Questioning Tips
• Increase higher-order questions (open – how, why which?)
• Increase the wait time 3 seconds for a lower-order question and more
than 10 seconds for a higher-order question
• Direct questioning for differentiation – no hands
• Provide criteria for quality answers
• Phone a friend
• Pose, Pause, Pounce, Bounce
Most importantly….plan your questions
Choose a lesson your are teaching this
week and plan at least one higher order
question to ask.
Choose a student or group of students
you would like to pose that question to.
What sort of questions do you think
students might ask in return?
Test your question in a small group.
https://goo.gl/pTCwBs
Increased challenge
Classroom climate: Effective Questioning
• Has everyone in your classes answered a question this year?
• Are students asking high quality questions to you and each other?
• Do you think students feel comfortable and safe answering questions
in your classroom?
• How important is it that students provide a definitive answer to every
question?
• Suggest a technique you could use to increase collaboration amongst
students answering questions.