Accountability and Attention during Questioning

Learning objective: to understand how to use a series of techniques to improve

student accountability and attention during questioning and class discussion.

Starter• Discuss: Which of these teachers do you most

agree with and why?Mr. A: Questioning is

the basis of all my lessons. All my students

are engaged during questioning, they are all learning and they really

enjoy it. Absolutely none of my students

switch off, ever.

Ms. B: I resort to questioning quite a bit, but

it never really seems to work all that well. I always

get the same students contributing and others never get involved. It is also hard to see exactly what they are learning.

Ms. C: I have quickly learnt that questioning adds

pretty much nothing to my lessons. It reduces pace, creates opportunities for misbehaviour, and no one

pays attention. I would rather get my students

doing an activity.

Question

• What makes a questioning session successful?

Marketplace1. In groups of three, use the information provided to

create a poster designed to teach your technique,– Rules:– Ten word maximum,– Use images / diagrams etc.,– Take care to analyse and explain how the technique is

a lever to accountability and attention.2. Teacher stays, everyone else move around the

room and visit the stalls.3. Go back and teach the teacher.

1. Pose, Pause, Pounce, Bounce

How do we make sure students are thinking about what we want them to?

• Pose, Pause, Pounce, Bounce

1. Teacher asks the question before they give the name of the student who will answer. This avoids students ‘switching off’.

2. Teacher gives thinking time, ensuring that not only the keenest or quickest students engage with the material. For anything other than straight retrieval questions, this should be at least three seconds. Often, letting the students ‘write’ beforehand is a useful method.

3. Teacher picks a student to answer the question, being observed by the students to be doing this ‘randomly’ (even if this is not, in fact, random). This builds a sense that all students must do the thinking required.

4. Instead of merely confirming the truth of the answer, the teacher asks students to ‘take a stand’ about this themselves.

Pose: ‘If the hand is Lennie's childishness what are the ripples?’

Pause: ‘Remember, I expect everyone to have an answer ready’ 1....2....3.....4.....5

Pounce: ‘Harvel, what do you think.’

Harvel: ‘I think this is about his actions.’

Bounce: ‘I want an A,B,C about that answer please.’ 1.....2.....3.....4.....5 ‘Braulio’Repeat ad nauseam

Script

2. Active Note Taking

Active note taking• What?

– Students take notes during a class discussion

– Procedure: 1. Students write down an initial

personal answer to a question,2. They then take down, in note

form, the comments made in the discussion,

3. They write the name of the student to build discussion of each others’ answers,

4. At the end, students go over the discussion with a pen / highlighter looking for new learning,

5. Finally, they re-write their initial thoughts to demonstrate progress.

3. Agree, Build, Challenge (ABC questioning)

Engineering classroom discussion• Steps: 1. Ask a question. This needs to be a ‘deep’ question so that there is

enough material for a discussion. 2. Give students time ‘Wait Time’ to formulate their initial answer.

Often, getting them to write down their ideas is a good way to start.3. Teacher picks students to respond. First student gives an answer.4. Students must respond using a sentence starter from the A,B,C grid –

this should be displayed on the wall / board.5. Teacher nominates a student to respond. They must either Agree,

Build on or Challenge the previous answer. If they agree, they must give a reason why.

6. Teacher continues to choose students to respond to each other.Taking it further: Train the students to lead their own discussion i.e., by allowing them

to pick who will speak next.

Agree, Build, ChallengeGiving a new opinionI think that... My opinion is.. I believe that..In my view ...

AgreeingI agree with .... because...I would argue the same thing because...The reason I agree with... is...That is an interesting point because...

BuildingI would like to build on ....’s point because...I agree with ... but I need to add...In addition to ....’s point...Building on what ... said...That is a good argument however it needs...

ChallengingI don’t think ... is right because...I would like to challenge this because...I disagree with...because...My own view is different because...This view is incorrect because...

4. Take a Stand

A,B,C,D cards

• What?– Give the students a set of A,B,C (D) cards

(pieces of card with the letters on them that are attached together by a treasury tag),

– Set a topic for discussion, and train the students to use the cards in the following way:

– Hold up A if they agree with a comment made,

– B if they agree but feel that the response needs to be built on,

– C if they want to challenge the comment,– The teacher can then select the student

to speak based on either: what might be interesting for the discussion i.e, “why do you want to challenge that James?” or through random selection,

Other methods of taking a stand• The principle of taking a stand is that students

need to actively display their thinking on a given topic. With this in mind, there is an endless number of things you could do.

• Some ideas:Stand up (agree); Sit down (disagree)

Stand in different places in the room

Microteaching• Pairs:• In your pair, come up with an

interesting discussion focus for the group

• Plan out and practice running that session– Use at least two of the

techniques in the course of your session

– Think carefully about how you will maximise accountability during your session

• Be prepared to run your session, either to the entire class or in larger groups.

• Assessment

• Students, please think

carefully about the

following things and be

prepared to feed back to

the teachers:

1. What techniques are being

used to maximise

accountability / attention?

2. Are they working?

3. What could be done to

further improve this?

Reflection

•2 things you will try out in the next week

• 1 problem you can anticipate having to overcome

• 1 thing you don’t think will work and why