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The 49 Techniques first came to our attention in a March 7, 2010 article in the New York Times Magazine entitled "Can Good Teaching Be Learned?" The story focused on the book Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov. Having taught with mixed success in inner-city Philadelphia, some of us recognized the efficacy of the techniques, even in tough to handle classrooms. This article brings links to some of the blogs we found useful regarding this topic.

Setting High Academic Expectations

Technique One: No Opt Out. Teachers with high expectations don't accept "I don't know," but expect students to be engaged and "give it a shot."

Technique Two: Right is Right. This technique accepts no half-answers but asks for complete and correct answers to questions.

Technique Three: Stretch It. This technique pushes a teacher to take correct answers and ask students to add depth or nuance to their answers.

Technique Four: Format Matters. High expectations also means only accepting students answers in complete sentence with good grammar.

Technique Five: No Apologies. Teachers with high expectations don't apologize for what they teach. No more "Sorry I have to teach you Shakespeare."

Technique 39: Do It Again. Repetition is one way to be sure that students understand what you expect and that it is done to your standards.

Planning that Ensures Academic Achievement

Technique Six: Begin with the End. This planning technique focuses on the outcome instead of what you want to do during the period.

Technique Seven: The Four M's. The four m's of planning are:

Manageable

Measureable

Made First

Most Important.

Technique Eight: Post It. Be sure your students know your objective for the day by posting it on the board.

Technique Nine: The Shortest Path. Although teachers are often enamored with clever approaches, Lemov asserts that the shortest path to the objective is the most effective.

Technique 10: Double Plan. Double planning involves planning not only what you will do, but also what the students will do during a lesson.

Technique 11: Draw the Map. Drawing the map is controlling the environment by wisely grouping students through the seating chart.

Structuring and Delivering Your Lessons

Technique 12: The Hook. Introducing the lesson with a "hook," an activity or item that grabs the attention of your students will help enhance your lesson.

Technique 13: Name the steps. Great coaches, like great teachers, break down the tasks into steps.

Technique 14: Board = Paper. This technique means that students put everything you put on the board on their paper.

Technique 15: Circulate. Keep moving! Drawing the map suggests making room between the desks so the teacher moves unhindered.

Technique 16: Break it Down. Breaking it down requires the teacher to use the wrong answers and help students discover the correct number.

Technique 17: Ratio Part One. This is a complex idea and requires two parts! It involves increasing student participation and limiting teacher talk.

Technique 17: Ratio Part Two. More strategies for increasing the time students are involved in discussion.

Technique 18: Check for Understanding. This is an on your feet method of data collection, sort of a formative assessment on the run.

Technique 19: At Bats. Baseball coaches know that the best way to increase effectiveness is to increase the number of times they are "at bat."

Technique 20: Exit Ticket. An exit ticket is a quick formative assessment of the lesson your students just finished.

Technique 21: Take a Stand. This technique encourages students to have opinions and to take stands on those opinions.

Engaging Students in your Lesson

Technique 22: Cold Calls. Like the sales technique, the teacher asks someone who is unsuspecting for an answer. It avoids "opting out," and keeps all your students on their toes.

Technique 23: Call and Response. This technique uses a tradition from African American hymnody and creates a way that the whole class can participate in questioning

Technique 24: Pepper. Like a coach lobbing balls to his fielders, a teacher can "pepper" his or her students with fast-paced questions, which makes it fun and keeps students on their toes.

Technique 25: Wait Time. Teachers are too often too impatient, and provide an answer to their own question when no student pops a hand up. On the other hand, teachers also don't give students time to shape a complete, thoughtful response to a question.

Technique 26: Everybody Writes. What goes on the board needs to go in the notebooks.

Technique 27: Vegas. Nothing like a little glitz to liven up classroom instruction!

Creating a Strong Classroom Culture

Technique 28: Entry Routine. Having a structured entry routine expedites the beginning of instruction.

Technique 29: Do Now. Familiar to elementary teachers and devotees of Harry Wong as "bell work," Do Nows are brief academic tasks to review the previous day's work or to introduce the day's new work.

Technique 30: Tight Transitions. Transitions need to be scripted and rehearsed, so little time is wasted between instructional activities.

Technique 32: SLANT. SLANT is an acronym for what excellent attention behavior looks like.

Technique 33: On Your Mark. Coaches expect athletes to be ready to engage in their sport. In the same way, a teacher shows students what they need to be "on their mark."

Technique 34: Seat Signals. Simple hand signals simplify requesting routine interruptions, such as using a bathroom or getting a pencil, can eliminate some of the waste of time that plague instruction.

Technique 35: Props. In Teach Like a Champion, parlance, props are fun routines the class does together to support the success of their peers.

Building and Maintaining High Behavioral Expectations

Technique 36: 100 Percent. Champion teachers don't create unreasonable behavioral expectations, because their final expectation is that everyone conforms all (100%) of the time.

Technique 37: What to Do. Be sure, if you are asking for compliance, that you have been very explicit in explaining what it is you want your students "To Do."

Technique 38: Strong Voice Part One and Part Two. This technique, strong voice, is one that separates the really effective teacher from the adequate. It's in two parts so you understand its use and how to acquire it.

The Blogs below continue the chapter "Setting and Maintaining High Behavioral Expectations."

Technique 39: Do It Again. This technique is perhaps the only negative consequence that truly works. When students fail to meet your standards, you ask them to "Do it again." They model the appropriate behavior but are eager not to have to do it again.

Technique 40: Sweat the Details. Building on the "broken window" theory of policing, Lemov notes that maintaining high standards will have positive effects across the classroom environment.

Technique 41: Threshold. This threshold is the one at the door. By meeting and greeting students as they enter you can set the tone for your class.

Technique 42: No Warnings. Responding early and proportionately can help you avoid real crises. So rather than giving warning, you mete out consequences when the behavior is still only a minor problem.

Building Character and Trust

Technique 43 Part 1: Positive Framing. Positive Framing means casting things in a way that is positive and leads to appropriate behavior. This blog starts with three strategies to help you frame it positively.

Technique 43 Part 2. Three more strategies for framing classroom experiences positively.

Technique 44: Precise Praise. Rather than "cheap praise," precise praise is valued by students because it describes what it is you are pleased with.

Technique 45: Warm and Strict. It may seem that warm and strict are contradictory, but effective teachers can be both at the same time.

Technique 46: The J Factor. The J in J factor stands for Joy. This technique offers ideas to help your students experience the Joy!

Technique 47: Emotional Constancy. An effective teacher keeps his or her emotions in check and doesn't make it all about him or herself. Make your good moods about good performance, not about pleasing you.

Technique 48: Explain Everything. Be sure your students understand why you do what you do, as the why is an important part of instruction.

Technique 49: Normalize Error. If students understand that errors are not the end of the world but an opportunity to learn, they will be more willing to take risks and more likely to learn.

Teach Like a Champion is an excellent resource for teaching, especially for middle school and high school students. Besides the 49 techniques, it includes recommendations for improving instructional delivery. The book also includes video demonstrations of the techniques which make it well worth investing in the book.

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49 Techniques from Doug Lemov's Teach Like a Champion

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The 49 Techniques first came to our attention in a March 7, 2010 article in the New York Times Magazine entitled "Can Good Teaching Be Learned?" The story focused on the book Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov.

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Students
1. After looking closely at the image above (or at the full-size image), think about these three questions:

2. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.)

3. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the "Reply" button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.

Each Monday, our collaborator, Visual Thinking Strategies, will facilitate a discussion from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern time by paraphrasing comments and linking to responses to help students' understanding go deeper. You might use their responses as models for your own.

4. On Thursday afternoons, we will reveal at the bottom of this post more information about the photo. How does reading the caption and learning its back story help you see the image differently?
More?
* See all images in this series or a slide show of 40 of our favorite images.

* Learn how other teachers use it.

* Read our introductory post.

* Find out how teachers can be trained in the Visual Thinking Strategies facilitation method.

* Want to make sure you never miss a photo? Add What's Going On in This Picture? to your Google calendar to receive weekly reminders and see our full publishing schedule for the 2019-20 school year.

Updated: Nov. 7, 2019

This week's image comes from the Sept. 2, 2010 " Pictures of the Day: Mozambique and Elsewhere " on the New York Times Lens blog. The original caption reads:

A girl joined a group of men dressed as Soviet soldiers from World War II. They were part of a military parade held in Tiraspol to observe the 20th anniversary of Transnistria, a separatist region that broke away from the former Soviet republic of Moldova.

Gleb Garanich is the photographer.

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What's Going On in This Picture? | Nov. 4, 2019

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Students 1. After looking closely at the image above (or at the full-size image), think about these three questions: 2. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right.

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Strategies to increase student engagement

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Strategies to increase student engagement

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In 1947, medievalist Dorothy Sayers took the podium at Oxford University and delivered a lecture that would launch a referendum on modern methods of education. It took time, to be sure, but from our current vantage point in 2020, there is no doubt that her words left a sizeable imprint on the current educational landscape. The Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS) reports the existence of hundreds of Christian, classical schools across the nation, many of which point to Sayers' lecture as a source for both inspiration and guidance.

What did Sayers share that day that elicited such a response decades later?

In her own British way, the writer and poet articulated a forceful critique of modern education and then provided a compelling solution. At the 30,000 foot level, her critique was that modern educational methods were failing to equip students to learn for themselves. Her solution? Recover the lost tools of learning, also known as the liberal arts, in order to equip students to do the work of learning and be prepared for the complexities of life ahead.

In this article, I aim to demonstrate congruity between the classical principle of self-education and Doug Lemov's concept of "Ratio" in Teach Like a Champion 2.0. This is a continuation of my ongoing series on "Teach Like a Champion in Classical Perspective." Lemov is a leader in the charter school movement who is passionate about distilling the best techniques for the craft of teaching. Using data from state achievement tests as a starting point, Lemov and his team observed hundreds of top teachers across the nation to identify proven techniques for student success. Today I will specifically examine how Lemov's concept of "Ratio" works well to support what Sayers believed to be the purpose of formal education: to train students to learn for themselves.

A Problem to be Solved

First, let's get clear on the problem of modern education, as Sayers sees it. She opens her essay by criticizing modern educational methods for failing to prepare students to navigate the complexities of the modern world. In an age of mass-marketing and propaganda, schools were doing little to equip students to discern right from wrong in difficult situations where the truth is not immediately evident.

Sayers writes:

Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that to-day, when the proportion of literacy throughout Western Europe is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass-propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard-of and unimagined? Do you put this down to the mere mechanical fact that the press and the radio and so on have made propaganda much easier to distribute over a wide area? Or do you sometimes have an uneasy suspicion that the product of modern educational methods is less good than he or she might be at disentangling fact from opinion and the proven from the plausible?

It is incredible how firmly this punch, which was thrown over seventy years ago, lands today. The fact that Sayers wrote the preceding paragraph before the rise of the internet, social media, and the recent phenomenon of "fake news," is fascinating. If the "press" and the "radio" were propagating mistruths and fallacious thinking back in the 1940's, how much worse is the problem today? Who is preparing students to navigate such deceptive terrain? According to our lecturer, not schools.

And yet, Sayers isn't quite finished; she continues her attack on modern education with a barrage of questions:

Do you ever find that young people, when they have left school, not only forget most of what they have learnt (that is only to be expected) but forget also, or betray that they have never really known, how to tackle a new subject for themselves? Are you often bothered by coming across grown-up men and women who seem unable to distinguish between a book that is sound, scholarly and properly documented, and one that is to any trained eye, very conspicuously none of these things? Or who cannot handle a library catalogue? Or who, when faced with a book of reference, betray a curious inability to extract from it the passages relevant to the particular question which interests them?

Here Sayers identifies an even deeper problem ingrained within modern educational methods. According to Sayers, not only were schools in her day releasing students into the world ripe for the picking by propagandists and media producers, they were failing to prepare students to learn for themselves. Schools, instead of preparing a generation of students capable of thinking independently and equipped with the wisdom to navigate complex situations, were graduating men and women who remain dependent upon the thinking of others. Sayers concludes:

They [teachers] are doing for their pupils the work which the pupils themselves ought to do. For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.

What Sayers is referring to here is the classical principle of self-education. This is the idea that, as the saying goes, it is better to teach a man to fish rather than to merely give him one. Students need to learn how to learn if they are going to navigate this world wisely and virtuously.

Elevating the Ratio

Keeping what Sayers has said about the need for students to learn for themselves, let's now examine what Doug Lemov writes about "Ratio." For Lemov, the whole point of ratio is to get students to do as much of the cognitive work as possible. The more work students are required to do, the greater the ratio, and the more effective the teaching. Of course, Lemov isn't interested in students engaging in any sort of learning activity, but the kind of work that is truly cognitively demanding. He frames three different approaches for making this happen: questioning, writing, and discussing.

First, though, he clarifies that student participation itself is not equivalent to ratio. It is possible to have a high rate of class participation and yet low ratio with regards to rigorous cognitive work. Likewise, it is possible to have high "Think Ratio"-work that is truly rigorous-but low class participation. As the graph indicates below, the key is to seek both. Lemov writes, "When you seek ratio, you ultimately seek to be high on both axes" (240).

Teachers, then, should always be engaged in self-diagnosing ratio in their classrooms, asking the questions "How rigorous is the work?" and "How many are participating?".

The Content Prerequisite

Next, Lemov turns to what he calls "The Content Prerequisite" in order to reach the highest levels of ratio. This is the idea that in order for students to engage in rigorous thinking, they need actual mental content, or knowledge, to think about. Lemov acknowledges that in the current educational landscape, the memorization of "mere" factual knowledge is not highly regarded. But he goes on to argue that exercises where students try to "think deeply" without knowing much turns out to be vacuous. "Facts and rigor," Lemov insists, "are not opposites as some educators continue to suggest, but synergistic partners" (19).

Interestingly, Lemov is not alone on this view. The importance of knowledge acquisition in the learning process is confirmed by the research in Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. In this book, the authors argue that retrieval practice-recalling facts or concepts or events from memory-is crucial for gauging effective learning. In an early chapter of the book, entitled "Learning is Misunderstood," they point out that creative thinking, a popular phrase in today's educational world, and increasing knowledge, go hand in hand. Using a building metaphor, the authors write:

Memorizing facts is like stocking a construction site with the supplies to put up the house. Building the house not only requires knowledge of countless different fittings and materials but conceptual knowledge, too...Mastery requires both the possession of ready knowledge and the conceptual understanding of how to use it (18).

In other words, one can't effectively engage in problem solving, creative thinking, or rigorous analysis without knowing from memory the facts relevant to the topic. It is all too common today to brush off teaching factual knowledge with the quip "I'll just Google it," or "That's what Wikipedia is for." While it is true that we live in an age in which more information is at our grasp than ever before, it still falls to each individual human learner to sort the information into comprehensible categories. And ironically, to sort information, you need to know information.

(Side note: If you are looking for a great strategy to increase the amount of memory recall in your classroom we recommend checking out Jason's eBook on the practice of narration.)

The Importance of Knowledge

In her own way, Sayers confirms the importance of the knowledge prerequisite in her lecture. She creatively ascribes the Trivium, the three classical language arts, to three coinciding stages of childhood development. Admitting herself that her views on child psychology are neither "orthodox or enlightened" she defines the work of the grammar (elementary school) stage as memorizing, reciting, chanting, and observing. In short, it is about collecting mental material, or knowledge, that the mind will go to work on in later developmental stages. Sayers writes:

What that material actually is, is only of secondary importance; but it is as well that anything and everything which can usefully be committed to memory should be memorized at this period, whether it is immediately intelligible or not...At this stage, it does not matter nearly so much that these things should be fully understood as that they should be known and remembered. Remember, it is material that we are collecting.

While most classical educators today will disagree with Sayers' explanation of the Trivium, from a historical standpoint, and critique her understanding of childhood development, let's not miss her key insight here. It is the same idea that Doug Lemov and the authors of Make it Stick are touching on: knowledge matters. A rigorous education, one in which students are doing the cognitive lifting in a manner that prepares them to learn for themselves, requires the acquisition of knowledge. Where precisely this fits within the liberal arts paradigm is debatable, but the necessity of knowledge, or the content prerequisite, as Lemov calls it, is not.

Building Ratio in the Classroom

Now that we have discussed these preliminary matters, let's turn to Lemov's three ways for building ratio and empowering students to do the work of learning: questioning, writing and discussing.

First, teachers build ratio through questioning. When students are asked good questions and expected to give thoughtful answers, they are doing the bulk of the cognitive lifting. They are being asked to explain the concept or make a connection between two ideas. Rather than the teacher lecturing from "on high," students are engaged in the demanding task of working out knowledge for themselves. Some of the most useful techniques I have found for increasing ratio through questioning are as follows:

Wait Time: Allow students time to think before answering. If they aren't productive with that time, narrate them toward being more productive.

Cold Call: Call on students regardless of whether they've raised their hands.

Break it Down: When a student makes an error, provide just enough help to allow her to solve as much of the original problem as she can.

A second way to build ratio is through writing. As Jordan Peterson shared in a classroom lecture, the best way to teach students to be critical thinkers is to teach them to write. Both the amount and quality of writing students do on a regular basis are key determinants for their ability to think and learn for themselves. Perhaps one of the greatest advantages of writing assignments is that 100% of students are doing the cognitive work, as opposed to one or two when a question is answered orally by one or two students. I have to say, as someone who has been teaching writing for several years now, I actually get a small adrenaline rush when I've crafted a well-worded writing prompt and watch every single one of my students go off to the races in fulfilling it. Some key techniques that I've found helpful for building ratio through writing include:

Everybody Writes: Prepare your students to engage rigorously by giving them the chance to reflect in writing before you ask them to discuss.

Art of the Sentence: Ask students to synthesize a complex idea in a single, well-crafted sentence. The discipline of having to make one sentence do all the work pushes students to use new syntactical forms.

Build Stamina: Gradually increase writing time to develop in your students the habit of writing productively, and the ability to do it for sustained periods of time.

Building Ratio Through Discussion

A final way Lemov offers teachers to increase ratio in their classrooms is through discussion. He saves this way for last because in some sense it is the most predictable. When students are sitting in a circle and engaged in discussion, there is an (almost) inevitably high degree of ratio going on. In most classical schools, discussion is constantly used pedagogically as a tool for training in the liberal art of dialectic. So the benefits of discussion are well-known and celebrated.

Nevertheless, teachers would do well to remember that not all discussions are created equal. Students simply sitting in a group and restating their opinions at each other, as Lemov notes, does not qualify as a discussion (314). These are merely disconnected verbal interactions. Instead Lemov defines a discussion as "a mutual endeavor by a group of people to develop, refine, or contextualize an idea or set of ideas" (315).

I agree with Lemov's definition here with one philosophical caveat. It should be clarified that the ideas Lemov is speaking of are not to be understood as mere personal accounts of what people think about the world, whether or not these ideas actually correspond to reality. Rather, a worthy discussion should lead to the discern of objective truth, of the way the world actually is. Thus discussion always has a morally formative and humanizing goal: to expose students to the truth, that they might abide in it, and go on to express it prophetically to others.

Some helpful techniques for building ratio through discussion are as follows:

Habits of Discussion: Make your discussions more productive and enjoyable by normalizing a set of ground rules or "habits" that allow discussion to be more efficiently cohesive and connected.

Batch Process: Give more ownership and autonomy to students-particularly when your goal is discussion-by allowing for student discussion without teacher mediation, for short periods of time or for longer, more formal sequences.

Conclusion

In this article, I've attempted to demonstrate agreement between the classical principle of self-education and Doug Lemov's idea of building ratio. When students are expected to do the cognitive lifting in the classroom, they are being prepared to learn for themselves, not just at school, but throughout all of life. Certainly Lemov's techniques are insufficient for achieving the broader vision of human flourishing from a classical perspective, which entails growth in wisdom and virtue, but nevertheless, his insights for ways teachers can empower their students to learn for themselves are noteworthy. I heartily commend them to you in your broader aim to recover the lost tools of learning in the education of your students. As Sayers implies at the end of her lecture, it would seem that nothing less than the future of western civilization depends on it.

Other articles in this series:
Work, Toil, and the Quest for Academic Rigor "Teach Like a Champion" for the Classical Classroom, Part 3: Check for Understanding "Teach Like a Champion" for the Classical Classroom, Part 2: Teacher-Driven Professional Development "Teach Like a Champion" for the Classical Classroom, Part 1: An Introduction

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Building Ratio: Training Students to Think and Learn for Themselves * Educational Renaissance

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Empowering students to do the cognitive work in the classroom helps train students to learn and think for themselves.

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Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS): Critical Thinking and Inclusive Discussion

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VTS is an education nonprofit providing schools and museums with curriculum, professional development, and training in critical thinking skills.

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Discover and download free images - Pixabay

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Discover the best source for royalty-free images and videos. Even for certain commercial purposes ✓ No attribution required ✓

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Cultures of Thinking - Making Thinking Visible - Spectrum Education

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Ron Ritchhart describes the Cultures of Thinking like this: “Within a culture of thinking, students experience school as a place where thinking is valued and given time, rich opportunities for thinking abound in their day-to-day classroom experience, models of thinking are present in the form of seeing teachers and peers as fellow thinkers, and the […]

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The skill of question asking is far too rarely deliberately taught in school. We have worked with and learned from educators to develop a teaching strategy, the Question Formulation Technique (QFT), which provides a simple yet powerful way to teach students how to formulate, work with, and use their own questions.

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Teaching + Learning - Right Question Institute

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Effective questioning in the classroom can make or break your lesson. These questioning techniques are ones that I use time and again in my primary school lessons; the questioning examples given are drawn from maths but the principles apply across the curriculum.
I am a Key Stage 2 teacher, but I've seen secondary colleagues use similar questioning techniques in the classroom in Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4.

What is questioning in the classroom?

Effective questioning is an essential teaching skill that enables the educator to check pupils' understanding, broaden and deepen the topic under discussion, and model clear thinking skills, and speaking and listening skills.

Why do we need effective questioning techniques in the classroom?

"Good learning starts with questions, not answers." Guy Claxton, Professor in Education and Director of CLIO Development, University of Bristol.

And better questions tend to deepen and facilitate the learning process in the limited amount of time you have with your students, so let's make the most of them.

Here's are the top 3 reasons I believe in the importance of teacher questions.

1. Firstly, if we remember our assessment for learning training, we will know that questioning in the classroom in the classroom is a powerful formative assessment tool. Executed properly, higher order questions from the classroom teacher gives the teacher the opportunity to gauge student understanding of the topic as well as enabling students to actively participate in their own learning.

2. Secondly, a well thought out questioning strategy can help to build the relationship between teacher and pupil by encouraging engagement and improving verbal fluency of key concepts whether in primary maths or any other subject.

3. Thirdly, good questions also lead to good class discussions, better student interactions, and ultimately, the shared understanding that is part and parcel of the learning experience.

See also: How To Learn Maths

List of the 9 most effective classroom questioning techniques

This article will guide you through the 9 key questioning skills that, together with other teaching strategies, will have the most impact on your teaching and your classroom practice.

The majority of these 9 are open questions; they require longer, more thought out answers than those that only need a simple, short response (closed questions).

This means these types of questions usually won't have either a correct answer or a wrong answer - an idea pupils may need some time to fully understand and accept.

1. Are you sure?

Developing pupils' metacognition and critical thinking skills are crucial if we want them to be less reliant on the teacher as the person who 'knows'.

If a pupil is used to asking a teacher 'Is this right?' and getting a response then they are likely to not have checked their answer, not gained a deep enough understanding of the concept they are learning or have their need for affirmation so ingrained over years of schooling that they simply have to ask.

Asking 'Are you sure?' with a questioning tone will instantly flip the tables and create blind panic amongst your whole class. Especially when you ask the question as often when they are right as wrong. Even more so if you follow it up with 'Well okay, if you are sure...' or 'If it makes sense to you...'

Now, obviously blind panic is not what we are aiming for, but it is a stage they will need to briefly enter until they get used to this and the other questions in the post.

Soon, especially if you encourage a growth mindset in your primary school, they will pick up the idea that they really have to know if they are right or not and crucially, why. This leads us into a key follow-up question...

Other relevant articles

2. How do you know?

To be able to answer 'Are you sure?' confidently, pupils will have needed to have checked their calculation/explanation themselves, more and more often before they have even given their initial response. Asking 'How do you know?' ensures this by asking them to share their reasoning with you, a group or the whole class.

This question is also a great way to really develop students' thinking skills; they need to be clear not only that they have the right answer, but that they arrived at it by following the right method.

The result of this increased metacognition is children will be more reliant on themselves (and each other) for checking their understanding, method and answer.

3. What do you notice?

Alongside metacognition, developing pupils' ability to generalise can reap huge rewards. In other words, encouraging pupils to be mindful and look for patterns within and outside the mathematical area currently being learnt. This also helps their number sense.

Asking pupils 'What do you notice?' when showing 2 calculations or problems at the same time can help children to see what is similar and different. It's a key question when building procedural variation.

It also uncovers where a pupil's understanding is, showing whether their current line of thinking is relevant to the current learning, in turn enabling you to nudge them towards more relevant thinking where necessary.

In a lesson on exchanging you could ask the following question.

4. What's the same and what's different?

If you want a similar type of question that serves the same purpose as 'What do you notice?' but is more confining in its responses, asking 'What's the same and what's different about these 2 calculations / problems / statements?' will push that conversation on with you still guiding the direction.

5. Can you convince me?

This is another question that can help develop generalisation. Asking individuals or small groups to work together to convince you of something develops their depth of understanding and ability to reason.

Here are some maths question examples:

'Convince me that subtraction is the opposite of addition'

'Convince me that all multiples of 8 are multiples of 2'

Flipping around the previous question's example, 'convince me that you always need to exchange when you subtract a 2 digit number (subtrahend) where the ones are greater than the initial number (minuend)'

6. Is there another way?

'Is there another way to find 25% of £80?'

'Is there another way to work out 47 + 28?'

'Is there another way you could have used to find all the possibilities?'

These kinds of questions help children who have not used a modeled or shared method realise they are not 'wrong' because their problem solving method is different (they may be less or more efficient). It will also highlight to children that in Mathematics, as in life, there are many ways to skin a cat. It can also be used as a general challenge activity for pupils.

7. Is it always, sometimes, or never true?

This is a great higher-order thinking question to further develop children's ability to generalise and, dependent on the specific question used, their number sense. As with all the questions, it develops reasoning skills and can deepen understanding.

For more always sometimes never questions download this free resource of 108 questions to help children get to greater depth

'Is it always, sometimes or never true that you should round and adjust when you subtract 9 from a number?'

8. Can you imagine?

Building pupils' ability to visualise things without actually doing it themselves helps in a number of disciplines such as Computing or Science as well as mathematics. Looking specifically at mathematics, it helps pupils understand problems and raises their ability to reason with greater understanding.

So in a word problem, if you ask a pupil to imagine the train pulling up at that station at that time and then continuing on its journey to the next station, it can help contextualise an abstract time problem.

This type of questioning in the classroom is also a handy way to nudge children away from requiring concrete apparatus when you think they are ready, for example, 'Can you imagine exchanging that ten for ten ones?'

9. I think I understand what you mean, are you saying?

Okay, so our final question is more of a leading question than an open-ended question, but it is still a very valuable tool. You will always find times where a pupil's ability to verbalise their reasoning is not quite at the same stage as their actual thinking and thought process.

Dependent on the situation and the pupil, you may find it supports them, your discussion or the pace of the lesson in general by reflecting on the students response by saying

'I think I understand what you mean, are you saying you would always round and adjust because you know that 9 will always be next to 10 so you will always be able to do the same adjustment afterwards?'

In other words, build on their reasoning, making it sharper or more concise so that the group or whole class can develop their understanding and the pupil giving the explanation can internalise their understanding further.

There are several variations on this question, such as '

You've really tried hard to explain that... are you saying...' or

'It's a really difficult thing to explain, you've helped me understand it I think. Is this what you mean...'

So there you have it. Almost 9 questions that when used across school will significantly impact on teaching and learning and ultimately, enable all pupils, high and low ability students, to achieve with the National Curriculum, SATs and in using mathematics in their general lives.

Don't rush the answers when questioning in the classroom!

One final piece of advice if you're new to these questioning strategies - think about how you're going to be handling the answers to your questions too.

Give students time to think about their answers, prompt them for when you're looking for a long or a short answer, encourage the entire class to think about their own answers using their mini whiteboards to share their own thoughts.

These are the higher order skills from Bloom's Taxonomy at work here, so it can take more time than usual. This is the learning process in action!

Read more excellent teaching and professional development articles

Do you have pupils who need extra support in maths?
Every week Third Space Learning's maths specialist tutors support thousands of pupils across hundreds of schools with weekly online 1-to-1 lessons and maths interventions designed to plug gaps and boost progress.

Since 2013 we've helped over 150,000 primary and secondary school pupils become more confident, able mathematicians. Learn more or request a personalised quote for your school to speak to us about your school's needs and how we can help.

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9 Effective Questioning Strategies in Maths - Third Space Learning

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Effective questioning in the classroom is a key part of good teaching and learning. Here are the 9 best questioning techniques to use.

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Of all the blog posts I have written, the one that has been read, reposted and mentioned most often- is "How do inquiry teachers teach?" http://www.kathmurdoch.com.au/blog/2014/02/21/how-do-inquiry-teachers-teach

That was back in 2014. In the intervening years, more and more of my work has centred on the question of how. Looking back, it strikes me that this work has provided an important balance of emphasis. I am passionate about designing (planning) for inquiry. In order to understand the demands and possibilities of inquiry, it is vital to build capacity around the planning table - for teachers to know how to design for inquiry through conceptual, rich, authentic experiences and the use of a cycle or framework that scaffolds thinking from the known to the new. This work is about going beyond 'planning activities' and remains an essential element of the expertise necessary to use inquiry effectively. But without a parallel focus on pedagogy, the application of our plans to the classroom can fall well short of our intentions. In the end, it is the way we teach that makes the most difference to learning. I have been avidly reading my advance copy of Guy Claxton's wonderful new book "The Learning Power Approach" and this really resonated with me:
"How we teach slowly shapes the way young people respond to the unknown - to change, challenge, complexity and uncertainty....Our teaching can steer them toward becoming more positive, confident, and capable in the face of difficulty. OR it can steer them toward becoming more timid, dogmatic and insecure." (Claxton, 2018: 34)
What we teachers DO, SAY and think matters. More than any program or unit plan.

Over the last few years, I have had the joy of collaborating with hundreds of teachers in a quest to dig deeper into the pedagogy of inquiry. We have watched each other at work, co-taught and stripped lessons back to the minutiae of instructional practices. Informed by some of the work of Hattie, Marzano, Johnson, Dweck and others I have been gradually building up a more cohesive repertoire of key practices to which I return often.

So a new book is on its way! This book is based on 3 years of observation, experimentation and research into the essential practices of the inquiry teacher. (Like giving birth, each book I have written has been followed with the words "I am never doing that again." But the memory of the pain fades and the urge to write, create, design and share returns!!!)

I am doing something I have not done before. I am using this post to share the bones of the book - the essential framework of the practices. And I would love feedback. I've been playing around with these words/phrases for nearly 3 years now. I have tweaked, changed, added, removed along the way. My intention is to capture the essence of the practices in a key word or phrase. The detail and the practical 'how to' will be in the book - but this is the essence.

The practices reflect what we have noticed when teaching 4-12 year olds. This is my area of experience and expertise and although my instincts tell me much is transferable, I acknowledge that the source of this work is extensive, long term work in the early-childhood through to primary setting. I don't have the consistent, lived experience of working with secondary school students (although taught in a University for 10 years) so I am not going to profess that these practices are the right fit - but it would be interesting to hear....
(not really in order...)
1. Cultivate curiosity

Inquiry teachers provoke, model and value curiosity - and they do this in a myriad of ways. Curiosity is nurtured through the way the learning space is curated, the kinds of questions asked, the extent to which the learners' questions are valued and through the deliberate, infectious modelling of curiosity by the teacher themselves.

2. Question
We all agree that questions lie at the heart of true inquiry. Inquiry teachers elicit learner's questions and often use these to help drive learning encounters. But the role of the question in the inquiry classroom goes far deeper than displaying a wonderwall. Inquiry teachers know how to ask the right questions. They use questioning to guide the learner to think deeply. They ask more than they tell. Inquiry teachers question what they and others think - they question their own practice on a regular basis.
3. Connect
Perhaps the most powerful word in this suite of practices. Inquiry teachers are all about connection. They design journeys of inquiry with and for learners that help them see connections across learning areas and between 'I offer this word cautiously. I prefer it to 'When I talk to kids in schools about the learning experiences that they remember most fondly, it is always the 'Inquiry teachers observe, notice, reflect and respond. They bring an inquiry stance to their observations of and conversations with learners. They take time to notice what'Taking an inquiry approach to learning means drawing on one'Inquiry teachers understand the power of purposeful play. They know that all senses are involved in learning. And they know that play is not just for young learners. Time to play - to experiment, to tinker, to play with ideas benefits all learners. Inquiry teachers are not afraid to 'play with ideas' - to go outside...literally and figuratively. s capacity as a researcher, a thinker, a self-manager, a communicator and a collaborator. Teachers who use an inquiry based approach understand that the power lies in the process. They work hard to privilege the process of learning. They invite learners to inquire into learning itself and know that it is ultimately the skills and dispositions of the learner that dissolve the boundaries between school and life beyond school. Inquiry teachers keep their eye on the bigger picture. They avoid 'activities' or 'topics' for their own sake - inquiry journeys are ultimately about working towards conceptual understanding. s going on and to reflect on what they see and hear. And they notice themselves. They deliberately slow down instruction to Inquiry teachers inquire into the lives and passions of their learners. They provide opportunities for learners to follow some paths that matter to them and encourage each learner to set personal goals. Time is made for learners to explore questions of significance to them and an effort is made to help learners regularly inquire into themselves as learners. So...there they are. The 10 practices as of Nov 25th, 2017! Would love your thoughts as I continue to write the book. What do inquiry teachers...do? notice the way students are responding. Inquiry teachers are intentional, observant and responsive. real' ones. Learners crave authenticity and purpose. Inquiry teachers know how to use the school, local and global community as contexts for investigation. Whether it is inquiring into how to design and grow a sustainable garden, what to do about the car parking issue at pick up time, or collaborating with a scientists on the other side of the world, learners value opportunities to inquire into things that matter to them and their community. let go', it is more like 'letting out' as one does a kite string. Sometimes this is gradual, sometimes this is immediate but for learners to take a true inquiry stance to their learning, teachers need to release power and allow them to explore, figure out and make meaning. Not by themselves, but for themselves. Inquiry teachers take risks. While they plan thoroughly, they are prepared to release themselves from the plan and take a different path. Inquiry teachers design tasks that allow the learners to do the heavy lifting. school' learning and the world beyond school. Inquiry teachers value the connections they have with others - students, colleagues and the broader community. They teach kids how to collaborate as they investigate problems, projects and passions.
4. Release

5. Keep it real

6. Notice

7. Grow Learning Assets

8. Play

9. Think Big

10. Get Personal

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The art of inquiry: 10 practices for the inquiry teacher - KATH MURDOCH

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The Worldwide Cultures of Thinking project began with two frameworks. The first was the 8 Cultural Forces, a framework that helps to illuminate the building blocks of group culture. The second was the framework, in the form of the Understanding Map, for understanding what we mean by thinking. These frameworks, and the associated tools we have developed around them, are important vehicles for teachers and schools to leverage as they embark on creating robust cultures of thinking.

Of course, tools, frameworks, and practices alone do not make a culture. A culture lives in values and beliefs. A culture sends messages to communicate these values. In schools we send messages about what learning looks like, how it happens, what it means to be a good student, and the role of teachers and students. The messages we send are largely based on the mindsets we hold. These mindsets inform how we approach the act of schooling. They represent the professional stance we take toward teaching and learning.

Our current research in the Worldwide Cultures of Thinking project has focused on identifying these mindsets/stances. They represent 10 Guiding Mindsets that propel the development of a culture of thinking. Thus, we call this current line of research, Cultures of Thinking in Action. We present these principles below along with an accompanying theory of action that ties actions to outcomes. We also present a collection of resources, tools, actions, and practices that can help teachers advance them in their schools and classrooms. Simply click on the image accompanying each Mindset to read more.

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The Worldwide Cultures of Thinking project began with two frameworks. The first was the 8 Cultural Forces, a framework that helps to illuminate the building blocks of group culture. The second was the framework, in the form of the Understanding Map, for understanding what we mean by thinking.

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Effective questioning in the classroom can make or break your lesson. These questioning techniques are ones that I use time and again in my primary school lessons; the questioning examples given are drawn from maths but the principles apply across the curriculum.
I am a Key Stage 2 teacher, but I've seen secondary colleagues use similar questioning techniques in the classroom in Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4.

What is questioning in the classroom?

Effective questioning is an essential teaching skill that enables the educator to check pupils' understanding, broaden and deepen the topic under discussion, and model clear thinking skills, and speaking and listening skills.

Why do we need effective questioning techniques in the classroom?

"Good learning starts with questions, not answers." Guy Claxton, Professor in Education and Director of CLIO Development, University of Bristol.

And better questions tend to deepen and facilitate the learning process in the limited amount of time you have with your students, so let's make the most of them.

Here's are the top 3 reasons I believe in the importance of teacher questions.

1. Firstly, if we remember our assessment for learning training, we will know that questioning in the classroom in the classroom is a powerful formative assessment tool. Executed properly, higher order questions from the classroom teacher gives the teacher the opportunity to gauge student understanding of the topic as well as enabling students to actively participate in their own learning.

2. Secondly, a well thought out questioning strategy can help to build the relationship between teacher and pupil by encouraging engagement and improving verbal fluency of key concepts whether in primary maths or any other subject.

3. Thirdly, good questions also lead to good class discussions, better student interactions, and ultimately, the shared understanding that is part and parcel of the learning experience.

See also: How To Learn Maths

List of the 9 most effective classroom questioning techniques

This article will guide you through the 9 key questioning skills that, together with other teaching strategies, will have the most impact on your teaching and your classroom practice.

The majority of these 9 are open questions; they require longer, more thought out answers than those that only need a simple, short response (closed questions).

This means these types of questions usually won't have either a correct answer or a wrong answer - an idea pupils may need some time to fully understand and accept.

1. Are you sure?

Developing pupils' metacognition and critical thinking skills are crucial if we want them to be less reliant on the teacher as the person who 'knows'.

If a pupil is used to asking a teacher 'Is this right?' and getting a response then they are likely to not have checked their answer, not gained a deep enough understanding of the concept they are learning or have their need for affirmation so ingrained over years of schooling that they simply have to ask.

Asking 'Are you sure?' with a questioning tone will instantly flip the tables and create blind panic amongst your whole class. Especially when you ask the question as often when they are right as wrong. Even more so if you follow it up with 'Well okay, if you are sure...' or 'If it makes sense to you...'

Now, obviously blind panic is not what we are aiming for, but it is a stage they will need to briefly enter until they get used to this and the other questions in the post.

Soon, especially if you encourage a growth mindset in your primary school, they will pick up the idea that they really have to know if they are right or not and crucially, why. This leads us into a key follow-up question...

Other relevant articles

2. How do you know?

To be able to answer 'Are you sure?' confidently, pupils will have needed to have checked their calculation/explanation themselves, more and more often before they have even given their initial response. Asking 'How do you know?' ensures this by asking them to share their reasoning with you, a group or the whole class.

This question is also a great way to really develop students' thinking skills; they need to be clear not only that they have the right answer, but that they arrived at it by following the right method.

The result of this increased metacognition is children will be more reliant on themselves (and each other) for checking their understanding, method and answer.

3. What do you notice?

Alongside metacognition, developing pupils' ability to generalise can reap huge rewards. In other words, encouraging pupils to be mindful and look for patterns within and outside the mathematical area currently being learnt. This also helps their number sense.

Asking pupils 'What do you notice?' when showing 2 calculations or problems at the same time can help children to see what is similar and different. It's a key question when building procedural variation.

It also uncovers where a pupil's understanding is, showing whether their current line of thinking is relevant to the current learning, in turn enabling you to nudge them towards more relevant thinking where necessary.

In a lesson on exchanging you could ask the following question.

4. What's the same and what's different?

If you want a similar type of question that serves the same purpose as 'What do you notice?' but is more confining in its responses, asking 'What's the same and what's different about these 2 calculations / problems / statements?' will push that conversation on with you still guiding the direction.

5. Can you convince me?

This is another question that can help develop generalisation. Asking individuals or small groups to work together to convince you of something develops their depth of understanding and ability to reason.

Here are some maths question examples:

'Convince me that subtraction is the opposite of addition'

'Convince me that all multiples of 8 are multiples of 2'

Flipping around the previous question's example, 'convince me that you always need to exchange when you subtract a 2 digit number (subtrahend) where the ones are greater than the initial number (minuend)'

6. Is there another way?

'Is there another way to find 25% of £80?'

'Is there another way to work out 47 + 28?'

'Is there another way you could have used to find all the possibilities?'

These kinds of questions help children who have not used a modeled or shared method realise they are not 'wrong' because their problem solving method is different (they may be less or more efficient). It will also highlight to children that in Mathematics, as in life, there are many ways to skin a cat. It can also be used as a general challenge activity for pupils.

7. Is it always, sometimes, or never true?

This is a great higher-order thinking question to further develop children's ability to generalise and, dependent on the specific question used, their number sense. As with all the questions, it develops reasoning skills and can deepen understanding.

For more always sometimes never questions download this free resource of 108 questions to help children get to greater depth

'Is it always, sometimes or never true that you should round and adjust when you subtract 9 from a number?'

8. Can you imagine?

Building pupils' ability to visualise things without actually doing it themselves helps in a number of disciplines such as Computing or Science as well as mathematics. Looking specifically at mathematics, it helps pupils understand problems and raises their ability to reason with greater understanding.

So in a word problem, if you ask a pupil to imagine the train pulling up at that station at that time and then continuing on its journey to the next station, it can help contextualise an abstract time problem.

This type of questioning in the classroom is also a handy way to nudge children away from requiring concrete apparatus when you think they are ready, for example, 'Can you imagine exchanging that ten for ten ones?'

9. I think I understand what you mean, are you saying?

Okay, so our final question is more of a leading question than an open-ended question, but it is still a very valuable tool. You will always find times where a pupil's ability to verbalise their reasoning is not quite at the same stage as their actual thinking and thought process.

Dependent on the situation and the pupil, you may find it supports them, your discussion or the pace of the lesson in general by reflecting on the students response by saying

'I think I understand what you mean, are you saying you would always round and adjust because you know that 9 will always be next to 10 so you will always be able to do the same adjustment afterwards?'

In other words, build on their reasoning, making it sharper or more concise so that the group or whole class can develop their understanding and the pupil giving the explanation can internalise their understanding further.

There are several variations on this question, such as '

You've really tried hard to explain that... are you saying...' or

'It's a really difficult thing to explain, you've helped me understand it I think. Is this what you mean...'

So there you have it. Almost 9 questions that when used across school will significantly impact on teaching and learning and ultimately, enable all pupils, high and low ability students, to achieve with the National Curriculum, SATs and in using mathematics in their general lives.

Don't rush the answers when questioning in the classroom!

One final piece of advice if you're new to these questioning strategies - think about how you're going to be handling the answers to your questions too.

Give students time to think about their answers, prompt them for when you're looking for a long or a short answer, encourage the entire class to think about their own answers using their mini whiteboards to share their own thoughts.

These are the higher order skills from Bloom's Taxonomy at work here, so it can take more time than usual. This is the learning process in action!

Read more excellent teaching and professional development articles

Do you have pupils who need extra support in maths?
Every week Third Space Learning's maths specialist tutors support thousands of pupils across hundreds of schools with weekly online 1-to-1 lessons and maths interventions designed to plug gaps and boost progress.

Since 2013 we've helped over 150,000 primary and secondary school pupils become more confident, able mathematicians. Learn more or request a personalised quote for your school to speak to us about your school's needs and how we can help.

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9 Effective Questioning Strategies in Maths - Third Space Learning

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Effective questioning in the classroom is a key part of good teaching and learning. Here are the 9 best questioning techniques to use.