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Oral questioning is powerful - a teacher's skill can include or exclude pupils. Many questions will be asked of whole classes. How do you make this work?

• Do you choose a volunteer (who has put his/her hand up) or do you `conscript' someone?
• Are you matching your choice of pupil to the level of difficulty of the question you are asking?
• Do you choose someone who you think will know the answer or can you gain by asking someone with a partial understanding whose answer you can build on?
• Are you involving pupils from all parts of the room?
• Are you involving different groups of pupils (boys/girls, able/less able)?
• Are you maintaining the involvement of all pupils by your choices?

Your questioning skills could also:

• encourage children to ask each other questions;
• encourage and value the questions the pupils ask you;
• `snowball' questions, working from pairs to groups to whole classes;
• establish some children as `experts', perhaps as a result of other work they have done.

Effectiveness seems to depend on:

• breaking down shyness so that children are willing to risk or be tentative;
• children carefully listening to each other's answers or questions - not just to the teacher;
• the teacher capturing the `line of sight' of children;
• variety and sometimes surprise;
• the use of appropriate and supportive resources.

But be careful - it is easy to:

• over use closed questions;
• concentrate heavily on `recall' questions;
• ask the wrong question of the wrong person;
• use only primary questions with no follow up;
• leave the children no time to think before you intervene;
• pursue `red herring' answers;
• handle incorrect answers ineffectively or insensitively.

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