What teachers say

The first edition of Active Questioning was published in Autumn 2010. Over 700 teachers have been trained first-hand by author David Turner, and well over 500 schools are using the resource independently.

Teachers tell us many positive things about Active Questioning. They say that it boosts the everyday basics when they want pupils to respond to questions. They say that it adds value to:

• carpet time
• whole class discussions
• talking partners and think, pair, share
• group work
• participation
• spoken literacy
• higher order skills and open-endedness
• and inspectors notice it.

Teachers also say that Active Questioning helps them to:

• combine together what they already do well
• get ‘more from less’
• ‘scale up’ the quality of answers in normal lessons.

‘It‘s great because it combines different factors among the many that teachers are expected to constantly juggle, eg good questions, pupil collaborations, differentiation and gives you a system to help you remember them. It also gives you a method by which to do them. ’

Teacher evidence about Active Questioning