It's important for teachers to examine and reflect on their questioning practices.

Teachers can record and evaluate their questioning by recording a whole-class question-and-answer session. Replay the recording and evaluate the different aspects of your own questioning and focus on whether:

• you asked too many questions
• you had a balance of open and closed, high-order and low-order questions
• you encouraged opinion, informed speculation and tentative answers
• you handled incorrect answers effectively
• you provided thinking time.

Reflect on how you asked the questions and consider:

• Do you ever consciously audit your questions?
• How good are the key questions you plan for each lesson?
• How well do the questions you ask relate to the lesson's learning objectives/goals?
• Do the questions you ask challenge students? thinking?
• How often do you ask further questions that really probe understanding?
• How often do the learners ask the questions?
• How do the questions you ask promote learning?

The questions below provide a more specific framework to analyse your strengths and weaknesses in questioning and to focus your next efforts.

Traffic light your responses, then choose 1 or 2 ambers to develop and work on in collaboration with your supervisor/ mentor/ coach.

• Do you ask questions that reinforce or revisit the learning objectives?
• Does your questioning engage students in thinking for themselves?
• Do you involve all students?
• Do you model for students the sort of questions they might need to ask?
• Do you ask questions that show connections between previous and new learning?
• Do your questions motivate students?
• Do you preface your questions with an individual's name and a motivational challenge?
• Do you ask students to explain their thinking?
• Do you reflect back? 'So, if I'm right what you're saying is?'
• Do you ask students to listen accurately?
• Do they listen and respond to each other as well as the teacher?
• Do you sometimes play devil's advocate with your questions?
• Do you promote justification and reasoning?
• What about speculation and hypothesis?
• Can you encourage upside-down thinking by asking for the opposite point of view or an outrageous alternative?
• Do you provide opportunities for students to explain the processes they choose, as well as describe the outcome?
• Do you foster an atmosphere of trust where students' concerns and ideas are valued?
• Do you stage or sequence questions with increasing levels of challenge, moving them from unsorted or unordered knowledge to organised understanding, where patterns and meaning have been established?

Let students in on the way lessons will be conducted. Negotiate a set of rules or norms for group expectations related to individual behaviour during lessons and discussions. For example, specify:

• We all need time to reflect on past experiences if we are to gain new understandings.
• We all need time to think before speaking.
• We all need time to think out loud and complete our thoughts.
• We learn best when we formulate and answer our own questions.
• We learn from one another when we listen with attention and respect.
• When we share talk time, we demonstrate respect, and we learn from one another.

1. Introduce and explicitly teach and explain the norms. For example:

• We all need time to think before speaking.
• Sometimes, when I ask a question, several of you raise your hands right away. You know an answer immediately and you want to share it! Others of you are still thinking. And that's OK. In fact, I'm going to ask all of us to take more time before we speak and to use that time to think.
  Because even if you have an answer right away; if you think about the question for a little while before you speak, you may come up with another answer or a better answer. Why do you think it
  would be good to take some time to think before speaking?

2. After students demonstrate an initial understanding of this norm, it can be reinforced through practice and feedback. For example:

• Let's try this. I'm going to ask a question, and then I want all of us to say together, 'one-thousand-and-one, one-thousand-and-two, one-thousand-and-three'. Then I'll call on someone to answer. OK?
• Now I want you to practice this in your groups. You'll find a set of questions in your folders. You are to facilitate a group discussion, using wait time after posing each question.

The teacher might circulate around the room, monitoring and making notes for feedback that can be given to the class at the end of the exercise.

3. Finally debrief the activity with the whole group - probing again to encourage students to reflect on the value of this norm to their learning.

• Clarify with students the importance of everyone doing the thinking, learning and reflecting throughout each stage of every lesson. If the classroom culture emphasises that everyone is expected to think and be ready to answer any question rather than 'hands up', students are more
  likely to be involved with the lesson.
• Create a system to help you keep track of who you call on, so you can ensure that all students have equal opportunities to contribute.
• Forewarn students about some key questions: Later in this lesson, I am going to ask a question about ??
• Model how a variety of questioning strategies will be used in the classroom, reminding students that they can say 'please come back to me' if they need more think time or are unsure and want to
  build on the ideas of their peers. However, be sure to let them know you will always come back to them.
• Try to avoid answering your own questions! If the students know you will give them the answers after a few seconds of silence anyway, what is their incentive?
• Try not to accept 'I don't know' for an answer.
• Allow additional think time, if necessary, by moving on and then coming back to the student for a response later.
• Offer hints or suggestions to guide students in formulating quality responses.
• If a student is unable or unwilling to formulate a response, then offer 2 or more options and let the student choose one.
• Always try to find something positive to say about students' efforts, even if their answer is incorrect, as public embarrassment only confirms apprehensions about class participation.
• When students make mistakes, build their confidence and trust by asking follow-up questions to help them self-correct and achieve success.
• Practice questioning strategies with students. Repeat as necessary until various strategies become routine.

• When planning units or lesson sequences, plan the essential questions to accompany the major learning goals/ objectives for the unit/ learning sequence. These big picture essential questions should be concept-related, open-ended and designed to guide inquiry into the big ideas. For
  example:
  • In what ways do living organisms survive harsh or changing environments?
  • Do the benefits outweigh the costs of deforestation?
  • What should we eat?
  • What can we learn from the past?
  • How do writers influence their audience?
• Share the essential question/s at the beginning of the unit/ lesson sequence to motivate students and generate interest. For example, 'These are the questions we will be trying to answer in this unit/ lesson.'
• Use essential questions to guide the planning of further questions within lessons.
• Ensure the questions are answered by the unit/ lesson.
• Match questions to, and embed them in, the learning objectives/ goals for the lesson and share with students.
• Ensure there is a balance between asking and telling.
• Ensure there are questions planned that require students to engage in higher-level thinking as well as recall. It's easy to pose a lower-level question on the spot, but much harder to construct a higher-level
  question on the spot.
• Stage the questions so that the level of challenge increases as the lesson proceeds. This means asking knowledge and comprehension questions about new material prior to questions of analysis and evaluation.
• Pause during the lesson to check whether the key questions have been answered: Have we answered this? What else do you need to know??

Different experts categorise questions in different ways. However, the simplest and most important distinction, recognised by all experts, is between lower-order questions, which require children to remember, and higher-order questions, which require them to think.

As a general rule:

• a lower-order or factual recall questions tend to be closed, with a single right answer, and are likely to be 'what', 'who', 'when' or 'where'.
• higher-order are more likely to start with 'how', 'why' or 'which', and tend to be open with a range of possible responses.

Lower-order questions have an important part to play in checking knowledge. However, most research suggests teachers ask too many of these basic recall questions and not enough thought-provoking, higher-order questions.

Because teachers ask so many questions each day, it's easy for one style of questioning to become habitual and lower-order questions feel safest because they keep the lesson moving.

When planning:

• rework lower-order questions to raise the level of thinking required
• pose one question at a time
• refrain from posing a string of questions
• ask the types of questions that have more than one answer or that don't have a single right answer
• follow up answers with words and phrases like: 'Explain why?', 'What makes you think that?' and 'Tell me more', to provide a greater challenge, encourage speaking at greater length and get students thinking around the question in greater depth
• use tools such as Bloom's taxonomy to assist with the framing of questions that pose different cognitive demands.

• Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. London, UK: Routledge.
• Sullivan, C. (no date). Questions worth asking.
• Walsh, J. A., & Sattes, B. D. (2005). Quality Questioning: Research-Based Practice to Engage Every Learner. California: Sage Publications.