Questioning - to plan or to react?

It was last Friday lunchtime and whilst sat with our ITT students in Humanities, a discussion regarding Kagan structures turned into a Q&A regarding 'what makes effective questioning in class' - and yes we nerds were happily discussing T&L during our lunchtime!

It triggered one main question in my head that I have often battled with - do you plan the questions you wish to as students during a lesson OR take a more reactionary approach and see where the lesson takes you, thus relying on your own instincts and ability to probe deeper in response to the students, their level of engagement and intrigue?

I for one, at the start of my teaching career, would often write my top ten questions for the lesson into the necessary column in my lesson plan only to find I often got absorbed into the lesson itself and would ask a completely different set - I would query how you can predict what direction some elements of your lesson will take and therefore how you can plan ALL questions you wish to ask students in your lessons? I for one love following the students lead and often allow them to lead the questioning through pose, pause, pounce, bounce.

Returning back to advising our ITT students, we advised that whilst planning questions is often reassuring, one must also trust in their own subject knowledge to question and probe students spontaneously. This lead me to my weekends research and I stumbled across these great tips on the Teacher Toolkit blog (

To paraphrase from their site......10 Questioning Strategies:

1. Make a statement and ask pupils to agree or disagree with you, justifying why.
2. Ask a table to respond collectively to the rest of the class.
3. Scan the room for the “right child” for the question.
4. Pose a question for groups to discuss. Listen in and paraphrase back to the class on their behalf.
5. Avoid questions which begin with “Who” (e.g. “Who can tell me…”, “Who wants to explain…”). These can provide an opt-in and opt-out vibe. Use No Hands Up instead.
6. Add “Why” or “How” once a response has been given, even if a response isn’t what you’d expected.
7. Create optional choice questions (but be careful with the options you provide!).
8. State something incorrect, asking pupils to prove why you are wrong.
9. Vary questioning with lower order (recall questions) and higher order questions (thinking questions).
10. Finally, don’t over question. Questions are a tool for your assessment and to generate thinking. Cherry pick your questions and remember, if they still don’t know after you’ve probed their thinking, just tell them.

Why are these good strategies?

Teachers spend much of their day posing questions. Mix questioning approaches up and ensure a balance of open and closed questions to keep responses interesting and useful.

https://www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/2018/04/28/fermi-questioning/