What is question bubbles?

Place a stimulus (image, text, object, topic) in the centre of the page or display Surround it with speech bubbles containing question stems: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? What if? Learners use the stems to generate questions about the stimulus Sort the questions from simple to complex and select the best for further investigation

Question Bubbles - Higher-Order Prompts

How it works

Question bubbles provide visual scaffolding for learners who find question generation difficult. The speech bubbles contain question starters arranged from simple (Who? What? When? Where?) to complex (Why? How? What if?). Learners use these stems to formulate their own questions about a central stimulus.

The visual arrangement is important. Simple question stems are placed closest to the stimulus, while more complex stems are further out. This spatial arrangement helps learners understand that there is a progression in question quality, and that "What if?" and "Why?" questions typically require deeper thinking than "What?" and "When?" questions.

Question bubbles work particularly well with younger learners and those who struggle with open-ended tasks. The stems provide enough structure to get started while leaving the actual questions open. A learner who cannot generate a question from scratch can look at the "Why?" bubble and ask: "Why is the character angry?" This is a genuine question that they have generated with support, not one that was given to them.

As learners become more confident with questioning, reduce the scaffolding. Remove some bubbles, or replace specific stems with blank bubbles that learners fill with their own question types. The goal is to internalise the questioning habit so that the bubbles are no longer needed.

Classroom example

A Year 3 Languages, Literacy and Communication class in an Anglesey school is exploring a picture book illustration showing a child standing at a crossroads. Question bubbles surround the image: "Who is the child?", "Where are the paths going?", "When is this happening?", "Why does the child look worried?", "How will they decide which path to take?", "What if they choose the wrong path?" Learners generate their own questions using the stems. The "What if?" questions generate the most imaginative responses and lead into a creative writing activity.

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Curriculum for Wales connection

Question bubbles develop the "Plan" strand of thinking skills by scaffolding the questioning process and building learners' capacity for independent inquiry. They support cross-curricular literacy through question formulation and build a stage-not-age approach by providing accessible scaffolding that can be gradually removed as confidence grows.

Rainbow Curriculum's Thinking Tools lens helps you plan where questioning scaffolds are used across your curriculum, ensuring learners develop questioning skills progressively from simple recall to complex evaluation.

Tips

Arrange stems from simple to complex visually. This teaches question hierarchy without needing to explain taxonomy.
Use images as stimuli for younger learners. They generate questions more readily from visuals than from text.
A common pitfall: keeping the scaffolding too long. As learners become confident, remove stems and let them generate their own question types.
Display question bubbles permanently in the classroom as a reference tool for independent work.
Combine with QuADS grids: learners generate questions using bubbles, then sort them by type.

Related tools

Big Questions

Open-ended, thought-provoking questions that push learners beyond simple recall into genuine problem-solving, reasoning and creative thinking.

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.

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.

QuADS Grids

A question-classification tool where learners sort questions into four categories based on where the answer can be found: in the text, in my head, in another source, or it cannot be answered.