Author’s message

Thank you for choosing Active Questioning Plus. Active Questioning was first published in 2010 and has become a popular and successful publication used in around 1500 British schools.

The key attraction of Active Questioning is its flexible, dogma-free approach which trusts the teachers to get it right, exercising their professional freedom to adapt the approaches where necessary. The propositions and principles of Active Questioning remain timeless and unchanged:

‘It’s in the ask – the way you ask a question is as important as the question itself.’

‘It’s about cause and effect – the way you ask builds the quality answers you want.’

‘Good answers are yours for the asking.’

Active Questioning helps teachers to scale up the quality of thinking, engagement, literacy and spoken answers when questions are asked. Pupils become more confident as a result. They also transfer from speaking to writing with greater success.

These approaches help children at all stages of acquiring confidence and fluency in the use of the English language.

This expanded edition contains new resources, advice and filmed sequences of classroom practice – something that many teachers have requested. Filming took place in Peterborough, England in Spring 2015. The school in question is the first in the UK to have 100% of children on roll whose first language is not English. As a result, the teachers use Active Questioning in ways that suit their particular context and that work for their children. You, too, will decide how to adapt your Active Questioning from what you see and hear in these resources. It’s up to you how you apply the approaches to best suit your context.

As of September 2015, there is a new school inspection framework for England. Questioning remains the only classroom teaching skill to be mentioned in the school inspection handbook, in the descriptors for Good and Outstanding teaching.

More than ever before, teachers should feel freed from the idea that they need to ‘perform’ or teach in a particular way when the inspector is in the room, and this has been made very clear by Ofsted. In the same way, I hope you can free yourself from any dogma about questioning. Active Questioning is intended to provide practical, helpful encouragement and advice to all you great teachers.

Good luck and keep asking great questions!

David Turner