3 January 2007 To think, or not to think? That is the question !

Directed questions: Have you kept your New Year resolutions? Have you made any resolutions? What are your resolutions? What time do you call this? (for late arrivals) What time did you think you had to start? Ask succession of people with little opportunity to respond Then: Who’s made any resolutions? Why have you made resolutions? (directed) Do you agree? Can you add to that? Anybody got any other ideas?

Points Arising from Research Improving questioning was one of the keys to raising attainment identified by Black and Wiliam in Inside the Black Box (see Formative Assessment) Formative Assessment Teachers ask up to two questions every minute, up to 400 in a day (though many of these are procedural), around 70,000 a year, or two to three million in the course of a career Most teachers’ questions are lower-order. Increasing higher-order questions to around 50% of the total can raise attainment and improve pupil attitudes Most teachers’ questions are answered in less than a second, often by the teacher him- or herself. Increasing wait time to 3 seconds for lower order questions and 10 seconds for higher order ones improves the number and quality of answers The importance of pupils articulating ideas themselves means that it is important to try to get them to ask questions. When pupils ask questions this can lead to more talk, higher-level thinking and can give social benefits

Creating Evaluating Analysing Applying Understanding Remembering BLOOM’S REVISED TAXONOMY Creating Generating new ideas, products, or ways of viewing things Designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing. Evaluating Justifying a decision or course of action Checking, hypothesising, critiquing, experimenting, judging Analysing Breaking information into parts to explore understandings and relationships Comparing, organising, deconstructing, interrogating, finding Applying Using information in another familiar situation Implementing, carrying out, using, executing Understanding Explaining ideas or concepts Interpreting, summarising, paraphrasing, classifying, explaining Remembering Recalling information Recognising, listing, describing, retrieving, naming, finding

Planning questions Do you plan the questions you ask in class? SCALE Always Never 1 5

A ‘for instance’ Measuring some energy changes in chemistry Usual route: –revise GCSE energy changes (exo- and endothermic) –practical instructions –complete practical –explain calculation New route: –revise GCSE energy changes (exo- and endothermic) –explain outcome –students plan practical –through questioning, figure out what to do with results Proof of the pudding…..

The classic physics example ‘Friction is the opposite of slipperiness’ Lower order question: –‘Do you agree?’ Higher order question: –‘What do you think?’ –and then…how do you manage the learning?

Your task…. Think (for at LEAST 10 secs!) of a tricky topic you are about to teach which you would usually start with some lecturing Using Bloom’s taxonomy try to think of 6 progressive questions or maybe 1 high order question to either teach or revise the topic (5 mins) Pair up with someone and share your ideas, particularly the student responses you anticipate and how you would manage the discussion (5 mins each)

A really useful article in the TES about teachers’ questioning: A Scottish education website with lots of useful lists of information and things to try Geoff Petty’s website (England’s answer to Hattie!), which contains lots of mini videos on comments about teaching and hints to improve: A 15 minute video on questioning techniques in the context of formative assessment as researched by Black and Harrison from King’s School of Education, who are the leading lights on formative assessment and the authors of ‘Working Inside the Black Box’ The rest of these are all websites with information about Bloom’s taxonomy and how it relates to questioning techniques: References + Some useful websites

Metacognition Metacognition is an important concept in cognitive theory. It consists of two basic processes occurring simultaneously: monitoring your progress as you learn, and making changes and adapting your strategies if you perceive you are not doing so well. (Winn, W. & Snyder, D., 1998) It's about self-reflection, self- responsibility and initiative, as well as goal setting and time management.(Winn, W. & Snyder, D., 1998)