22 Shades of Questioning
http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Discussion-Toolkit-6337096/
This was a resource I was passed by a friend. It can be
found on the TES resources website and is the work of Mike Gershon. I felt that
I needed to change up some of my questioning strategies and try and find some
new angles into AFL whilst outside in the cold of winter. PE is a tricky mix of
needing to stop kids working - in order to discuss what they are doing and how
they can improve and everyone freezing to death as the wind whips in and our
body temperature drops. Therefore, I need to have a wide variety of questioning
strategies and skills up my sleeve. This is a blog therefore, about trying to
add to my armoury of strategies to keep the class moving forward and focused,
without turning any of them into frozen statues in the process.
I will update my reflections on a different strategy a week. This week - I am going to try Gershon's "Listening Triads".
C.Wood PE teacher
The Listening Triad
The listening triad is essentially getting pupils into groups
of 3's –
v
1 person is the question master
v
1 person is the talker (answerer)
v
the last person is a recorder.
The aim is that the questioner asks their own questions, the
talker answers and the recorder feeds back to the teacher or the rest of the class.
I’ve trailed this strategy throughout all my KS3 and 4
classes this week, both in outdoor lessons and because of the weather this
week, the gym. I think it has some merit as a way of getting the quieter pupils
to take part in discussions and it forces pupils to think, in order to invent
their own questions, answer them and then be able to relay and explain to
another audience what they have heard. Therefore, there’s a lot more thinking
going on in a lot more pupils than when I just ask the same few pupils
questions that I want to ask. It seems much more effective if the students
invent the questions themselves.
Strengths
1.
The pupils do all the work not me for a change
2.
Gets all pupils involved in thinking and reflecting
3.
Flexible
method - they can choose their role based on their strengths or you can
be more directive of roles if you wanted to
There are though some weaknesses that mean I think it needs
some forethought to make it an effective strategy. The quality of the questions
may not be high as a start point, which then means the other two pupils are not
being challenged. If the pupil in the middle cannot answer – the process stalls
and lacks pace. If the pupil who is listening doesn’t feedback well – it then
means I have to step in and add to what they say unless – again – I lose more
pace in the lesson. There are obvious ways of countering these – but they take
up time and effort – e.g. give them a bank of suitable questions or add in
features like phone a friend or audience participation. Getting these types of
strategies to work will in the end need to be individually worked out in terms
of how they suit you or how far you want to focus on pace or independence in
the lesson.
Weaknesses
1.
Pupils questioning is not always that good
2.
Unless checked the recorder can get away with
not doing much - in classroom based
lessons they can literally record on paper what is said and repeat it back –
you need to add in certain extras – like they have to change what they report
back into just three key pieces of advice or coaching tips.
Summary:
I really like the idea of this, it is easy to set up, as a
dept we have created questioning prompt sheets to ensure they ask good
questions, hoping that if we keep using this they can then come up with their
own worthwhile questions. I have also
told the recorder that if the talker doesn't know the answer it is up to them
and also their responsibility to say if the answer is correct. It is really important to emphasise to the
question master to ask why or how, not just to accept one word answers.
This week’s questioning style…….
“Philosophy for Children”
To begin with I didn't
really understand what this was and it took a while to get my head around it. In
the end I interpreted it this way:
Pupils are in a circle and you put an object or stimuli in
the middle of them to get pupils thinking/talking. They then need time to think
of questions or ideas, and you can throw ideas or questions into the mix to
start them off. For example, “What do you think this would be used for?” Or
“Explain how this relates to…..” Then they have a short time to think in silence
or whisper to the person next to them. In feedback and discussion you need to
establish that only one pupil is meant to be talking at a time to encourage
critical thinking, creative and collaboration.
How I used it:
Practical lessons - I put pupils in groups and gave them
some equipment and they had to create a game or drill or warm up with it. Sometimes I gave them more instructions and
focus and other times I just told them to be creative and make it fun.
Theory lessons: I got
pupils in 3's. 1 pupil had to draw or
mould something from the lesson, the other 2 had to guess what it was and then
whoever got it right had to ask a question about that aspect. They got a point for getting the answers
correct.
Potential Strengths:
Easy to set up – very little equipment needed and not too
much space either
Gets all pupils involved in thinking and knowing that they
might have to make suggestions or lead tasks
Allows the pupils to be in charge of their own learning
Creates an atmosphere of discover and questioning –
especially good for Activating learning
Weakness':
It is up to the pupils to think and be creative – in the
short term this can take longer than you want and some pupils find this
challenging.
Depending on how you group them and the roles you give out –
individuals can potentially overpower the activity.
Overall:
This has been a successful experiment – I wasn’t convinced
at all at the start of the week but now I feel that this strategy will become
part of lots of my lessons. I think I will use this as a starter or plenary in theory
lessonsIn practical lessons it has been successful for KS4 for them
to come up with fun games so I will use it again, especially for warm ups and
final consolidation tasks.
This week I tried “Radio Phone-In”
This was a useful technique for both
plenaries during lessons for coaching points and development and also final plenaries
for really being able to assess understanding and progress
Possible set up:
The teacher is meant to be the host with 4 guests and the
rest of the class the audience.The Teacher leads the discussion; the four guests receive
role play cards and are asked to take on that character. The audience ring in with questions.
I think this set up allows for the most “control” by the
teacher….but it does limit the numbers participating in the activities.
I have tended to try and avoid playing a role and leave this
to members of the class. I have also tended to get the class to work in smaller
groups and to try and give the audience more of a role rather than simply
listening – I wanted them more engaged and active than that!
This week I used it
in my science lesson (reproduction lesson).
The pupils were in 6's, the radio host, a doctor, a nurse (to help the
doctor answer questions) and a few pupils to do some phone in questions.
In practical PE
lessons I have trialled it more like a talk sport thing where the host gives a
summary of the performance and the others in the group ask them questions based
on the summary and what they saw themselves.
This then allowed me to allocate roles in the “audience”
such as technical coaches. This worked well as the pupils who asked questions,
were then able to demonstrate and teach the skills that they had asked about to
the those who were answering the questions. This created a kind of circle of
feedback where those asking for help were getting help from other students who
were then extended by having tho teach their skills to others.
Like with the other question things
I've tried the strengths are:
·
All the focus is on the pupils; they have to
think and are therefore working hard to problem solve for themselves
·
Also – more importantly for me…. it runs itself
once the pupils are familiar with the processes
Possible Weakness
·
The quality of the questioning is only as good
as the pupils
·
If done in big groups hard to keep them all interested
·
If done in small groups harder to get round to
all groups
Conclusions:
I will definitely use
this in GCSE practical lessons in the future as it was a really effective way
of pulling all the learners into a discussion about how to make progress and
how to improve. As they were telling each other what to do and how to do it –
they all seemed more engaged and able to understand assessment criteria.
This would also be a fantistic way of developing and introducing a sport leaders programme in schools - it get pupils used to critiquing performance and then being able to coach each other to improve - a nice exercise before letting them lose on younger kids or peers.
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