Questioning
Planning questioning into lessons
Blooms Taxonomy
• 1956, Bloom researched thousands
of questions asked by teachers,
categorised them, and arranged the
categories into a hierarchy or
taxonomy. He related the taxonomy
to a ladder – the higher the rung, the
deeper the learning.
• Research has consistently shown
that the large majority of questions
asked by teachers come from the
first two categories, which require
factual recall and comprehension.
Few questions come from the other
categories which require higher
order thinking skills
There are some great posters and resources freely
available online to help support, promote and remind
you about using Bloom's in your classrooms.
I reworked a resource I found and updated it with the
new blooms which was given out in the last INSET
Each strand of Blooms and
what they mean
The activities or tasks you can
plan in for your lesson to push
higher order thinking
Question stems to help you
plan your higher order
questions in class
Preparation for a lesson coming up
Think of a lesson you are
going to teach this or next
week that you want to
build questioning into…
Use the worksheet to
prepare your questions
using the scale of blooms
to build up the higher order
thinking. You can also use
the scale to plan activities
for the students
Use this then throughout
your lesson as your prompt
sheet
Use Question stems from
blooms to develop
wording of the
questions.
Other ideas for how to
build in questioning
During the lesson students
write down questions that
they have about the
work/particular topic that
they are working on. Within
the lesson stop and allow
students to ask these
questions to each other,
small groups or to whole
class to find the answers.
TIP-Question prompts from
blooms could be used here to
develop wording of the
questions. Give the students
the sheet to use.
Other ideas for how to
build in questioning
Students read or listen to a
piece of
information/story/text. Then
they roll a die and ask and
answer the questions about
the topic. This can be done
individually, with a partner,
or even whole group.
TIP- Teacher makes the
resource before hand or get
the students to do the hard
work and prepare and create
the questions for each other/
themselves
Other ideas for how to build in questioning
Using lolly pop sticksUse two colours for name
calling sticks. Flip the
stick after you've called
that student.
Coloured coded question
sticks with blooms scaled
question stems written on
them to pick during the class
or students pick out
Other ideas for how to
build in questioning
Using Bloom’s Taxonomy you could
produce a series of colour-coded
questions (each category being given
a different colour) on one aspect of a
unit of work you are teaching.
You could ask your lower-ability
pupils to choose one question from
the first three categories (Remember,
Understanding, Apply) and if they can
manage it, one from another
category.
You could then get your more able
pupils to select one or two questions
from the more challenging
categories. Doing this will involve
pupils of all ability in the learning.
Other ideas for how to
build in questioning
You could introduce a competitive
element into your lessons by giving
your questions a currency using
Bloom’s Taxonomy as a general guide.
Your ‘Knowledge’ questions could be
worth one point, your ‘Comprehension’
questions worth two points and so on.
Pupils could amass points according to
the types of questions they answer.
Other ideas for how to
build in questioning
Pre write questions on ping pong balls
and let students pick them out of a
bucket or plastic container to make
your critiques or questioning sessions
fun and engaging.
Ways to Use
• You can sort through the balls to
tailor your questions to certain topics.
• You can use this technique when
introducing an new topic at the
beginning of a lesson.
• You could also pull out appropriate
questions to have students answer
when talking about a peer’s work
throughout the lesson or using in
plenaries.