Collaboration in Formulating Questions
Teachers and learners work together to create high-quality questions, building a shared bank of powerful prompts that deepen thinking across lessons.
What is collaboration in formulating questions?
- Work with colleagues or learners to generate questions for a topic
- Sort questions by type and identify which promote the deepest thinking
- Build a bank of effective questions that can be reused and refined
- Use the best questions as the foundation for lessons and discussions
How it works
Good questions do not happen by accident. They need to be thought about, discussed and refined. Collaboration in formulating questions means working with other teachers, or with learners themselves, to generate and improve the questions that drive learning.
For teachers, this means collaborating with colleagues in the same subject area or across subjects. Sharing questions saves time and raises quality. A bank of effective questions built up over time becomes a valuable department resource. It is worth discussing not just what to ask but how to word it, what follow-up questions to prepare, and what type of question suits different purposes.
For learners, this means teaching them to generate their own questions. Learners can be encouraged to think about what makes a high-order question, for example by generating questions on a topic using KWL/KWHL grids and then deciding which of their questions are the most powerful.
Small group talk strategies work well here. If groups of learners have access to questioning strategies, their talk becomes significantly more effective. The aim is to move from closed, recall questions towards open, analytical and evaluative ones.
Classroom example
A Humanities department in a Powys secondary school holds a termly "question swap" session. Each teacher brings five questions they have used successfully. For a Year 7 unit on migration, one teacher contributes: "If you had to leave Wales tomorrow and could only take one bag, what would you pack and why?" The team discusses how this question could be adapted across year groups and topics. By the end of the session, the shared bank has grown by thirty questions, all tested in real classrooms.
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Collaboration in formulating questions supports the "Plan" strand of thinking skills by developing learners' ability to ask productive questions. It models the Four Purposes, particularly "ambitious, capable learners" who can take ownership of their own inquiry.
Rainbow Curriculum's Thinking Tools lens helps you map where questioning strategies are used across your curriculum, ensuring that high-quality questioning is deliberate rather than left to chance.
Tips
- Keep a shared digital bank of questions organised by topic and type. Make it accessible to all staff.
- Teach learners to distinguish between "thin" questions (one right answer) and "fat" questions (many possible answers).
- A common pitfall: generating questions in isolation. The whole point is collaboration. Share, discuss and refine together.
- Include learner-generated questions in the bank. Some of the best questions come from learners.
Related tools
Big Questions
Open-ended, thought-provoking questions that push learners beyond simple recall into genuine problem-solving, reasoning and creative thinking.
KWL/KWHL Grids
A simple grid where learners record what they Know, what they Want to find out, How they will find out, and what they have Learned, structuring inquiry from start to finish.
Learners Set Questions
A strategy where learners generate their own questions about a topic, developing deeper understanding because creating good questions requires more thinking than answering them.
Quescussion
A discussion format where participants may only contribute questions, never statements or answers, creating a deep exploration of a topic through the power of questioning alone.
Question Bubbles
A visual scaffold where question stems are displayed in speech bubbles around a central stimulus, prompting learners to generate questions at different cognitive levels.
Source: Adapted from "How to develop thinking and assessment for learning in the classroom", Welsh Assembly Government, Guidance 044/2010.