Improve Questioning with the Great Teaching Toolkit

Great teachers use questioning for two main – and quite distinct – purposes: to promote students’ thinking, and to assess it. Questioning in the classroom is a popular topic, and quite rightly too. Teachers ask questions every lesson, every day – so it’s important to make sure that teachers and students are asking the right questions to move learning forward. In this blog, we explain how you can structure your school’s professional development plan around Questioning, by using the Great Teaching Toolkit.

Courses

The Great Teaching Toolkit includes two courses, which focus on Questioning; the Assessment Lead Programme and Questioning.

The Assessment Lead Programme’s aim is to maximise your assessment for learning by enhancing formative assessment and summative assessment strategies. The programme provides you with a framework for improving your assessment approach through evidence-based training, practical tools and resources and guidance for implementations.

 

The Assessment Lead Programme is one of the best CPD courses I’ve done in a long, long time, and would recommend it to anyone who is considering assessment as a priority”

Alex Havers, Assistant Head

In our Questioning course you’ll learn about using questioning for two classroom goals:

1. to promote thinking; and
2. to assess thinking.

You’ll explore the evidence on effective questioning, learning about how purposeful, targeted questioning and dialogue strategies can help to activate and promote your students’ thinking. You’ll learn about designing an assessment process and the amount of information it can provide, how much weight this information carries, and what inferences and decisions it can support.

 

This course, in particular, has really helped teachers with using questioning for different purposes. The information comes in lots of different forms, which keeps it interesting, and retrieval quizzes are used as well – practising what the course preaches!

Jablai Saleh, Headteacher

Feedback on Questioning

The Great Teaching Toolkit also includes student surveys, all aligned to the Model for Great Teaching. Teachers have the option to do Element specific surveys, in which they can really shine a spotlight on that Element of practice, to inform their professional development.

The image below is an example of feedback from a student survey relating specifically to Element 4.3 (Questioning) of our Model for Great Teaching.

Video observation tools are another feature of the Great Teaching Toolkit, which have a feedback rubric, again aligned to the Model for Great Teaching. Teachers can share snippets of their practice with their colleagues, and receive feedback aligned to the Model. This feedback can act as a prompt for collaborative, coaching conversations.

Resources

Additionally, the Great Teaching Toolkit includes a resources section, designed to allow teachers to access a wide-range of quality resources, aligned to their Element of focus. Teachers can access resources like; Retrieval Practice: Myths, Mutations and Mistakes by Kate Jones, Designing good multiple choice questions, by Andy Tharby and Questioning in the Classroom, a podcast with Michael Chiles.

In case you missed it, register here for a recording of Kate Jones and Professor Stuart Kime webinar called Questioning & the Model for Great Teaching.