Teachers ask up to 400 questions a day– I think we need to question this questioning to make sure it counts.
In this video re-recorded from my presentation at TeachMeet Brum I discuss using Seth Godin‘s notion of ‘Poke the box‘ to influence classroom questioning.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgT-ClPWja4]
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Really interesting post! I’m seeing some similarities between this idea and Philosophy for Children (P4C) enquiries. You never know quite where the questioning is going to take you, but more often than not it’s very interesting. Once the children understand that it’s my purpose to ‘confuse’ them with a lot of the questions they really get into it.
I definitely think I would like to try some ‘poke the box’ questioning as well. Initially I’m thinking it is something that would be more successful in a small group or one-to-one situation. Have you found it easy to ‘poke the box’ during whole class teaching?
Many thanks Oliver I’m looking at questioning with our teaching and learning group so I’m very interested how you’re furthering this with your class. We’re currently intrigued by wait time and how often teachers answer their own questions and your opening statement on the number of questions asked each day in class really struck home.
Thanks Michael, glad this was of interest. I found Alexander’s ‘Towards dialogic teaching’ really insightful on some of those issues. I’ve also been experimenting with ‘No Hands Up’ questioning which I will try to blog about soon as I have found it an interesting approach.
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