Using the techniques
The purpose of Active Questioning is to encourage pupils to think, speak and discuss their ideas before they answer a question. If they do this, there is a greater chance that they will be successful and confident when asked to speak, relative to their age and current ability. Practice will improve that ability.
The four elements
Active Questioning techniques are based around four basic elements:
Many of the techniques recommend that you give pupils time to think before responding to your question, so that they are more likely to be successful because they were allowed time to prepare their answers.
However, note that whenever you set a time frame for talking or thinking, the actual time given should never be longer than a minute and a half. Even if you say to the pupils that they have to speak for five minutes, do not actually give them five minutes. If a pupil is given longer than a minute and a half for their answer, they may go off course, trail off, or lose track.
Many of the techniques use word targets, either to use certain words, a certain number of words, or certain types of words, such as connectives. This lets pupils know what you are looking for and helps you and other pupils to assess the success of their answers. It can also act as a stimulus for pupils’ thinking.
A key part of these techniques is encouraging pupils to discuss your question with each other before giving you their answer. This is based on the idea that they are more likely to be successful because they have discussed their ideas with their peers first.
For this to work well, you may need to revise the seating arrangements in your classroom so that you can be sure that the discussions are fruitful and immediate (without needing to spend time during the lesson moving chairs, etc). You may also need to adjust your lesson planning to arrange for pupils to work in groups, pairs or threes, depending on the task you have set. Make sure that, if you set a group task, you hear responses from a range of pupils throughout the lesson, not just from the more confident pupils in each group.
The techniques in this section aim to enable you to include all your pupils in the learning, not just the keen ones (who may always offer to answer and are often more prepared to talk). In your planning, you should consider which groups of pupils you wish to target in your questioning (eg boys, girls, underachievers, etc) and at what level of demand.
General points
It is worth giving pupils a choice as part of your questioning. Asking a range of questions, and then allowing pupils to choose one of those to answer is one way to increase engagement and participation. Explain that you are going to pose three open-ended questions on a topic and that pupils should choose which one they will answer.
Although the techniques in this section are listed individually, after you have used them for a while you may find it more effective to combine one or more techniques rather than use each in isolation. For example, you could set a speaking target and use alternatives to questions at the same time. The examples of the techniques described in this section sometimes illustrate how one technique may be combined with others.
Time frames and targets