Process Questions
Process questions are exactly what they say they are.
Questions that get learners thinking about the processes of learning.
Here are twenty-five examples:
- What did you do? Can you talk me through it?
- How are you thinking about the problem?
- What ideas do you have for getting started? How might they work in practice?
- What other strategies could you use? What might be the result?
- Where did it go wrong? How could we use this information?
- If you were going to do it again, how would you change your approach?
- What else could you do to get a better end result?
- Is there another strategy you could try?
- How much better might it be after three more attempts?
- What did you learn from each attempt? How did you use that to refine your thinking?
- Why did it end up like this?
- How could you get a different result through changing what you did?
- How could you tweak your efforts next time, to get a different result?
- If you were going to have another go, what changes would you make? Why?
- Can you explain what someone else would need to go through to get the same result?
- How does this attempt compare to the last one?
- How does your thinking now compare to your thinking before?
- What is the biggest difference between now and then?
- How are you approaching things differently this time? Why?
- What makes thinking more effective? Why?
- How would you describe the thinking you’ve done?
- Where did things start to change? What did you do that caused this?
- If you were going to start again, what would you focus on first? Why?
- Can you tell me what other options there are? How might these work?
- What if you had to explain the process to an alien? What would you say?
And here are five ways you can use such questions.
As the basis of mid-lesson reviews and plenary activities
This is fairly obvious.
The questions promote metacognition and encourage learners to reflect on what they are doing, why they are doing it, and what is happening as a result.
The fit with mid-lesson reviews and plenaries is a natural one.
In either case, repeated use habituates learners into thinking in this way.
By creating a process-checklist for learners to use independently
Identify five process questions relevant to your teaching and turn these into a checklist learners can use to monitor and improve their thinking and learning.
You might decide to have a general checklist that retains relevance across the board, or you might choose to create a series of separate checklists for different topics or activity types.
By creating a bag of questions from which you and your learners can pick at random
Print out the questions above, cut them up, and place the pieces of a paper in a bag.
You now have a random selection tool!
During activities, or at the end of the lesson, bring the bag out and invite a learner to select a random process question.
Pose this question to the whole class and then facilitate a discussion.
As the basis of success criteria
Learners use success criteria to direct their efforts during an activity, or across a lesson.
Keep their focus on processes by using process questions as the basis of your success criteria.
For example, instead of giving learners three statements as success criteria, you might give them three process questions.
They then must keep checking whether they can answer these successfully as they go through the task or lesson.
When they can, they know they have been successful.
If they can’t yet, they know how they need to target their efforts (or what to target their efforts towards).
As a tool through which learners can self-assess
Provide learners with a list of process questions, using the ones above as your starting point, and encourage them to use this as a self-assessment tool through the course of the year.
Explain that learners should choose two or three questions from the list and use these to assess their work as they go.
Indicate the benefits they are likely to draw in terms of self-regulation, metacognition, and improving the quality of their thinking and learning.
Analysing and Reflecting on Strategies
Learners working under a growth mindset perspective are more likely to keep going when things get challenging.
As part of this, they may well deploy different strategies to find out what works.
They will also analyse and reflect on the results of their efforts.
This leads them to develop their understanding of how to succeed in each task or with a given topic.
We can help all learners to develop a growth mindset by setting up opportunities in which everyone can analyse and reflect on the strategies they have used.
In addition, we can give learners access to the thinking of their peers, allowing them to see and hear what strategy analysis and reflection looks and sounds like.
Here are five examples of how to do it.
Strategy Collation
At the end of an activity or towards the end of a lesson, ask learners to share the different strategies they have been using.
Collate these on the board.
Then, ask learners to get into groups of two or three.
Assign each group one of the strategies.
Their task is to analyse it.
This may include going and speaking to the person who shared it.
They need to be ready to report back to the class about how the strategy works, when it might be useful and whether it could be adapted.
Reflection Sheets
Create a reflection sheet that learners can use to analyse and reflect on the strategies they use during a lesson, activity, or topic.
This is essentially a reflection pro-forma with an emphasis on problem-solving strategies.
Learners can note down what strategy they used, when they used it, why they used, how effective it was, and how they could adapt it in the future.
Develop by having learners interview their peers and adding the reflections they hear to their own sheets, perhaps in a different colour.
Write me a letter
Ask learners to write you a letter explaining, analysing and reflecting on the strategies they used in a particular task.
Provide relevant guidance and use modelling and scaffolding where necessary.
Read the letters learners write when you take in their work – this will give you a good insight into who is thinking effectively about processes and who needs more support.
Simplify by asking learners to write a short paragraph (perhaps on an exit pass) instead of a letter.
Peer-Tutoring
Identify the learners who are most able to analyse and reflect on the strategies they use to solve problems, think and learn.
Charge these learners with the task of tutoring their peers.
Divide the class into groups, ensuring one of the identified learners is in each group, and give these learners time in which to talk their peers through the strategies they have been using, how they have been using them, and whether they have been effective or not.
Peer-Modelling
Identify one or two learners skilled in analysing and reflecting on the strategies they use to solve problems.
Use their thinking as a model for the rest of the class.
Talk through what they have been doing and, if appropriate, show what the results of this have been.
Ask learners to discuss what you have shown them with a partner and to identify what they could borrow, adapt, or copy from their peer’s model.
