??? Effective questioning brings insight, which fuels curiosity, which cultivates wisdom ???

Questioning underpins all classroom assessment methods

As a Primary Teacher, questioning enables me to check little learners' understanding. It also benefits learners as it encourages engagement and focuses their thinking on key concepts and ideas. Questioning is one of the most important dimensions of teaching and learning. It gives me the chance to find out what students know and understand, and it allows students to seek clarification and help.

There are many types of effective questioning strategies and question types. Question types is in terms of lower vs. higher order questions. Lower order questions are usually "what" questions. They typically test the knowledge students have about definitions or meanings. Higher order questions tend to be "why" and "how" questions which encourage students to think more deeply about a concept or the reasons for an answer. My teaching practice include both types of questions, with an emphasis on higher order questions which challenge my students and make them think.

I have learnt fun and effective questioning strategies in my last CICT session which I want to implement like;

Basketball questioning – to engage students, develop connected thinking and development of ideas.


Phone a friend - to encourage whole class listening, participation and builds self-esteem in children, especially shy learners.

Mantle of the expert – a child gets an opportunity to answer the questions from the class and share detailed knowledge.

Pose, Pause, Pounce & Bounce – I would like to try this strategy for structuring questioning in the classroom, to ensure thinking time, selection of students to answer and collaborative sharing of ideas and response in my lessons.

Pose – A question is posed as a big question for all to consider and form a response to.
Pause – Thinking time is given and possibly discussions/thinking together.
Pounce – A child is selected who will answer.
Bounce – Teacher ‘bounces’ the answers from student to student developing the ideas/encouraging all to add their views or extend the e.g. depth and breadth of answers.

However I tried few of the effective questioning strategies in my lessons which resulted in engaging my students actively in the class. They were encouraged and even the shy learners came up with the answers.

Hot seating – A child was placed in the hot seat and answered several questions from the class.
This encouraged listening and provided challenge in my lesson.


Eavesdropping – During the group discussion I walked around the class listening to the discussion of different groups and targeted specific questions to individuals as per their ability.

5Ws and 1H – I have used this strategy many times in my lesson to create self-reflective approach to learning in my class. Who, What, Where, When, Why and How; these questions covers up from the lower order questioning to higher order questioning in my lesson catering to the needs of each ability group. This encourages my students to extend into reasoning and hypothesis. This is quite an effective questioning strategy in my experience.