The hall was full of teachers sitting around tables that were littered with handouts. The teachers’ faces were lit by the ghostly glow of a projector screen.
Some teachers were listening, some were trying to undertake a spot of sneaky marking and others looked like they had lost the will to live.
At a table on the other side of the hall I could see Barry twiddling his grey moustache dreaming of the INSET day buffet and his holiday caravan on Anglesey.
The speaker was the fourth individual (in a two-and-half-hour straight session) to lecture us on teaching techniques: “And that,” she announced in the dreariest of tones, “is what a hinge-point question is.”
Anna swung back on her chair and turned to me and asked: “What’s she talking about?” Gary whispered: “Unhinged questioning, it’s what you do towards the end of a lesson when the students just aren’t listening and a member of SLT has popped in to complete a learning walk.”
The speaker finished and another PowerPoint slide appeared with a new topic. There was no room in the presentation on questioning for questions – which struck me as being ironic.
How much better could that session have been if we had been posed some questions to discuss and then asked some questions of our own?The importance of questioning in lessons is well documented. However, how often do we as teachers consider the questions we pose? Do we allow time for questioning in lessons? Do we hear the answers we want to hear? Most importantly, do we have time in our busy working lives to actually reflect on and trial and improve new ways of working?
Hinge questioning
A hinge question is formative assessment that should appear at a “hinge-point” in a lesson. For me it breaks down into two simple points:
- It is the point where you move on from one concept or point in your lesson to the next stage.
- Students must understand the content that has gone before that point in order to move on to the next section of learning.
In my experience many teachers will do one of the following:
- Utilise a hinge-point question without even realising they are doing so as part of general good practice. However, if the teacher realised they were at a “hinge-point” in their lesson then perhaps they could refine the question and/or develop it further to better support student learning.
- Avoid hinge-point questions, consciously or otherwise, because they have a lot of content to get through and don’t want to know if students have fully understood the first section because this might mean having to go back over material again when they feel they don’t have the time to do so.
For students to progress with their learning it is important that they have understood the previous points and learning covered. If students have not understood, this could cause problems in the future for students’ learning and the success of lessons.
Using a hinge-point question
Some sources would suggest that using a hinge-point question is a difficult process. I would propose they are both right and wrong. At its basic level, a hinge-point question is simple – it should check that students have understood prior learning and you should use your knowledge of your students to consider why they have given you that answer. This will then allow you and your students to move forward.
However, a true hinge-point question is a little more complex. This is important to bear in mind when striving for quality lesson-planning, or if you’re thinking of firing up a PowerPoint to deliver a session on hinge questioning to your colleagues.
Some points to remember
- Your question needs to be able to establish some key information. You need to acquire this information from your students during the flow of your lesson and react to it/adapt your lesson accordingly.
- When you have posed your question students should not require more than a minute to discuss and respond to you. You want to acquire the gist of their understanding – they don’t need to write you a dissertation!
- Once they have responded you need to use your knowledge of the class, or if you haven’t taught the class before your knowledge of that learning stage, in order for you to consider why the students have responded in the way they have.
- The information you have gathered in this process will then allow you to either continue with your lesson, or go back over material in new ways to ensure all students are ready to move to the next stage. The information should allow you to better understand the mistakes students are making. For example, in English, if students are meant to be discussing the effects of language features on a reader there is little point in setting them a lengthy written response task if they are still mixing up adverbs and adjectives.
- The more you consider and reflect on hinge-point questioning, the more you might be able to pre-empt errors, which means you could have alternative activities to switch to in order to support learners. This also means you might be able to better offer differentiated tasks for students who are at diverse stages of their learning journey.
- Don’t lose the pace. I was observing a colleague teach recently and I noticed he had become bogged down in hinge-point questioning, trying to get to the bottom of student misunderstanding by posing more questions on the top of his hinge-point question like some sort of crazed TV detective. This caused his lesson to almost come to stand-still and students lost interest as he interrogated them at random in a quest to understand their understanding.
- A good hinge-point question should give you enough information to adapt the lesson, or move on as appropriate. This is not to say that sub-questions don’t work, but if you are going to use them make sure you carefully consider what you will ask so you don’t end up asking questions that dig you into a hole, or just leave you almost shouting “why, why?” – like a crazed teacher banging one’s head against the whiteboard while the paper aeroplanes circle overhead.
There are lots of books and articles written on hinge-point questioning if you want to read more. For me, the basics are worth thinking about in your busy day – put simply: do students have the knowledge to successfully carry on to the next section of their learning?
Questions as a means for learning
While we’re at it, what might be worth considering for a moment is questioning as a whole. Teachers ask many questions throughout a lesson, but it is worth reconsidering why we would ask questions during the course of learning in the first place:
- To encourage students to reflect on prior learning.
- To allow us as teachers to assess progress (links to hinge-point questions above) and completion of work.
- To support student engagement in lessons. Consider that student in your classroom who seems to be daydreaming – do you pose questions to him/her, or ask the student who always has their hand up?
- To further support students’ interest in learning.
- To encourage students to think critically.
- To support independent learning.
In writing this article, I dug out some notes I had from Bloom’s Taxonomy in relation to questioning. According to Bloom’s Taxonomy, there are six ways of categorising questions that we could consider when structuring questions for our lessons:
- Knowledge. Can you pose questions that check if your students can remember and recall facts/key information?
- Comprehension. Can you ask questions that allow students to generate responses that demonstrate understanding of meaning?
- Application. Can you generate a question that allows students to use knowledge in a new way, or in a new setting?
- Analysis. Can you consider questions that allow students to separate ideas into sub-categories or appreciate broader ideas and concepts?
- Synthesis. Can make questions that allow students to create new ideas and concepts?
- Evaluation. Can you develop questions that allow students to reflect and pass judgement on work, ideas or concepts?
It is important to consider how you utilise different types of questioning in your lessons that check for different aspects of learning. There are conflicting reports and studies when it comes to which type of questioning works best. In my opinion it is good practice to consider all of the above when developing questions in lessons.
When to pose questions is important to consider too. I would argue that there is not a “good time” to ask students questions as such – what is important is that you are posing questions and giving students time to consider them.
Having said that, there is a lot of literature available to you if you want to explore more about questioning online and in print.
Responding to students’ responses
The responses we give to students’ answers are also a critical part of the questioning process. Things to consider:
- All student responses are important. Even that year 7 student who, on being posed a question about ratio, decides to ask “why is it you walk like that sir?”
- What you say could send students down the wrong learning route. Consider your responses carefully.
- You can ask more questions to the student’s question to support your understanding of their response and indeed their understanding of the concept.
- Try not to be vague in your response. It’s very tempting when we get an answer that is “sort of right” to say something to the effect of “errr, hummm, sort of” and then go to the student who still has their hand to the ceiling as they will have the answer we were looking for.
- Say “well done” to students who respond. Be sincere in what you say.
Questions for critical thinkers
As a teacher of some years, I am concerned that the environment teachers are working in is driven by accountability and results, which could mean that lessons become increasingly focused on teaching to the test.
I do not doubt the importance of examination success for schools and students, however I would hope that as professionals we would want to also support students to think in and around their learning to better support their progress to college, universities and to the world of work and life beyond school.
I believe it is important that we create an environment where we as teachers can pose thoughtful questions and allow students to consider their own ideas.
Perhaps the best questions posed in lessons are the ones that students pose for themselves.
- Martin Matthews is an experienced secondary school teacher in Cheshire.