The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people NQT CPD Session Using Questions to Engage and Challenge 7 February 2012

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Session Objective  To identify ways to improve questioning technique and to develop questions in order to: - promote higher order thinking - engage and challenge students - impact upon student progress

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Quotes  Socrates: defined teaching as ‘the art of asking questions’.  Guy Claxton ‘Good learning starts with questions, not answers’.

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people The importance of questioning  Why is questioning so important?  Purpose of questions?

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Make-over of a question  Generate a question that you have used in the last week in your classroom.

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Research  Teachers ask 2 questions every minute, up to 400 a day, around 70,000 a year, 2-3 million in the course of a career.  Most questions are answered in between 1 and 3 seconds (Carole Dweck).  An average of 1 spontaneous question per lesson come from pupils – to do with procedure (Wragg)

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Ofsted  Evaluation Schedule Grade Descriptors ‘Teachers have high expectations of all pupils’. ‘Teachers regularly listen astutely to, carefully observe and skilfully question groups of pupils and individuals during lessons in order to reshape tasks and explanations to improve learning’ ‘Teaching consistently deepens pupils’ knowledge and understanding’

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Unproductive/lower order questions  Recall Questions – answers already known to you/student. E.g. ‘Where/when did the event happen?’  Comprehension questions  Closed questions – can be answered ‘yes’, ‘no’ I can’  Rhetorical questions – answer within the question E.g. ‘In what year was the War of 1812?’  Defensive questions – cause justification and resistance E.g. ‘Why didn’t you complete your IL again?’  Agreement questions -seeking agreement with your opinion E.g. ‘This is the best solution, isn’t it?’, ‘You all understand what you have got to do?’

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Higher Order Questions  Bloom’s Taxonomy (1952)  Hierarchy of skills in thinking: - Children know before - they can apply before - they can evaluate

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Higher Order Questions  Explicit reference to higher order thinking skills E.g. ‘Do you think this is the best alternative?’ becomes ‘Evaluate these alternatives.’

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Higher Order Questions  Plurals E.g. ‘What ideas do you have? ‘What are some of your goals?

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Higher Order Questions  Tentativeness – might, maybe, take a risk ‘What might be some factors that would cause…? ‘In what other ways could you solve this problem?’

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Higher Order Questions  Empowering presuppositions – communicate high expectations ‘What personal learning or insights will you carry forward into future situations?’

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Higher Order Questions  Evaluation questions  Analytical questions  Synthesis questions

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Extreme Question Make-over  Go back to question.  Re-phrase to add rigour, challenge, high expectations, encourage higher order skills- based thinking

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people From the beginning of lessons  Ask questions to prepare students’ mental and physical state for learning Get them thinking!

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Starters What’s The Question? Answer – In the park

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Starters Thunks A question about everyday things that stops you in your tracks and helps you look at the world in a new way If I lend you £100,000 does that make you a millionaire? Does everything have an opposite? If you want to fail and you succeed at failing, have you failed?

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Starters What ifs…? Rubbish bins gave you £1 for every sack of rubbish?

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Starters Which is biggest, best, beautiful?

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Starters Would you rather…? Have foil teeth or feather fingers?

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Starters 5,3,1 most important? Saw Drill Plane Screwdriver Hammer

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Other strategies for asking questions  Mind map strategies you use in your classroom

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Other strategies for asking questions  Deploy pause, prompt, probe routinely  Give ‘think time’  Encourage students to elaborate and reflect so they can demonstrate their thinking  Use non-verbal cues to signal you want more  Ask for evidence and reasoning behind an answer  Ask another student to answer a question raised by a student  ‘No hands’ to encourage participation of all  Personalise/differentiate questions  Give the answer and ask students what the question is  Open up thinking/invite students to respond to others’ answers  Use ‘phone a friend’, pair rehearsal, ‘ask the audience’  Ask learning questions, open questions  Avoid gender bias

The Cottesloe School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of young people Reflection  Record and share 2 strategies/key learning points to take away from session and try in the classroom.  Session evaluation: WWW/EBI