Ping pong or basketball? Questioning in the classroom Sue Madgwick & Richard Perring

2 Objectives. To recognise effective dialogue for learning and how it helps pupils become more independent learners. To understand the importance of questioning in creating effective dialogue. To consider strategies that develop whole-class and/or group dialogue. To reflect upon the implications for your own practice.

Objectives: What properties make a shape unique? To develop confidence when explaining mathematical ideas

4 Objectives: What properties make a shape unique? To develop confidence when explaining mathematical ideas

5 Why do we ask questions? to interest, engage and challenge pupils to check on prior knowledge and understanding to stimulate recall, mobilising existing knowledge and experience in order to create new understanding and meaning to focus pupils’ thinking on key concepts and issues to help pupils to extend their thinking from the concrete and factual to the analytical and evaluative to lead pupils through a planned sequence which progressively establishes key understandings to promote reasoning, problem solving, evaluation and the formulation of hypotheses to promote pupils’ thinking about the way they have learned.

6 …..the only point of asking questions is to raise issues about which the teacher needs information or about which the pupils need to think. (Working inside the black box. Paul Black 2002)

7 What makes questioning effective? Prepare key questions to ask Ask fewer and better questions Give pupils “thinking time” to respond to questions, and pause between them Use questions to make progressive cognitive demands Use pupils’ responses ~ even incorrect ones Encourage pupils to ask questions Listen, and acknowledge pupils’ responses positively. ( 2.2

8 Teacher to a six-year-old drawing a picture of a daffodil: “What is this flower called?” Child: “I think it’s called Betty”. Quoted by Robert Fisher in his book ‘Teaching Children to Learn’.