3 Using questioning during demonstrations

Pause for thought

Think back to when you were a student.

  • Did you ever find a demonstration confusing or hard to follow initially?
  • What caused the confusion or difficulty?

In order to make sense of a demonstration and remember it, your students need to draw on prior knowledge of concepts and procedures. Learning happens when your students are supported to assimilate new information and understanding into an existing framework, and this may involve challenges to their existing understanding.

Using questions can help you to direct your students’ attention to details that you want them to notice and remember. Ask them: ‘What seems to be happening here? Is that what you would have expected? What do you think caused that?’ Asking questions wherever possible is preferable to telling your students lots of information, because it demands that they think about what is going on in relation to what they already know. This is active learning. At the same time, it allows you to check your students’ understanding as you work through the demonstration with them, and to remind them of relevant information or concepts before you move on.

To be most effective, your questions need to go beyond recall of definitions so that your students apply their knowledge and understanding. For example, instead of asking for a definition of ‘angle of refraction’, you might ask where you would need to make the measurement on your demonstration.

Some ways in which you can help your students to develop more complete and thoughtful responses are through prompting, seeking further clarification and in refocusing a student’s response. You can find out more about these techniques in the unit on questioning and the key resource ‘Using questioning to promote thinking [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] ’.

Activity 3: Detailed planning for demonstrations

This activity will help you to develop your planning and teaching practice. If possible, work with another teacher on this activity so you can share ideas.

Look at Activities 11.1 and 11.2 in the Class X textbook. They deal with refraction of light through a prism and dispersion of white light by a prism. For each of these two activities in turn:

  1. Write down:
    • a.the conceptual knowledge and understanding that your students will need for this demonstration
    • b.the questions you could ask to remind them of this, and when you will ask these questions – for example, will you ask the question in the introduction to the demonstration, or at a particular point during the demonstration, or both?
  2. Write down:
    • a.the procedural knowledge and understanding that your students will need for this demonstration (this is knowledge about how to do the task)
    • b.the questions you could ask to remind them of this (or find out what they remember) and when you will ask these questions.
  3. Write down:
    • a.the new concepts and definitions you will need to introduce as part of the demonstration
    • b.when and how you will introduce each of these.
  4. Write down:
    • a.what you want students to notice and learn from this demonstration
    • b.how you will direct attention to this feature
    • c.what questions you will use after the demonstration to help consolidate the learning.

Now integrate these ideas into your lesson plan and carry out the demonstrations with your students.

Pause for thought

Reflect on the planning you did in Activity 3, and answer the following questions:

  • What differences did you notice in how well the demonstration went, compared to previous demonstrations?
  • How confident are you that all your students were engaged with the demonstration? Were there some students who were not engaged? Why do you think this happened?
  • Did all your students attempt your questions? Could you use a technique such as ‘think-pair-share’ (see the unit on ‘pair work’) to support students’ learning during the demonstration?

2 Planning for effective demonstrations