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Ask a Large Number of Questions
Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction [FREE GUIDE & RESOURCE]
Jamie Clark
September 19, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes
👋 Hey friend!
In this edition of ⚗️DistillED, we dive into Asking a Large Number of Questions—Rosenshine’s third Principle of Instruction. Questioning is the heartbeat of great teaching: it keeps every student thinking, provides practice with new material, and gives you instant feedback on whether to move on or pause and reteach.
Barak Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction
Barak Rosenshine (1930–2017) was an American educational psychologist whose research focused on effective teaching. Drawing on classroom observation, cognitive science, and teacher expertise, he developed the Principles of Instruction—ten practical guidelines that highlight what the most effective teachers do.
These principles emphasise reviewing prior knowledge, presenting material in small steps, checking for understanding, guiding practice, and ensuring all students are successful before moving to independence. They’ve since become a cornerstone of explicit teaching and evidence-informed practice worldwide.
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What is Asking a Large Number of Questions?
Rosenshine’s third principle is all about getting every student thinking. Effective teachers don’t just explain and then move on—they thread questions throughout their lessons to secure attention, check for understanding, and prompt deeper thinking.
Questioning is a core part of responsive teaching and act like a pulse check—letting you see if the class is ready to move on or if something needs to be retaught. This is what Rosenshine found in his study…
"The most effective teachers also ask students to explain the process they used to answer the question, to explain how the answer was found."
What’s more, Rosenshine directly highlights several ways teachers can make questioning effective and involve all students:
Paired Talk: Get students to share their answer with a partner before sharing with the class, so everyone has a chance to rehearse their thinking.
Summarise and Share: Ask students to summarise the main idea in one or two sentences, write it down, and then share with a neighbour.
Written Responses: Have students write their answers on a card or slip of paper and hold them up so you can quickly see who has understood.
Show of Hands: Use quick checks — hands up if they know the answer, or hands up if they agree with another student’s response.
Choral Response: Get the whole class to respond together (ideal for vocabulary, key facts, or lists), making practice more engaging.
Instead of relying on the same few volunteers — or asking “Any questions?” and mistaking silence for understanding — it is important to actively sample student thinking. Ask students to summarise, repeat instructions, explain methods, or restate a peer’s idea.
The diagram below captures the loop: input, question, response — turning lessons into an ongoing dialogue that engages every learner and strengthens understanding.
Why does this matter? Let’s take a quick look at what the research says…
Why is Asking a Large Number of Questions Effective?
Rosenshine’s research shows that the most effective teachers spend a significant portion of lesson time explaining, demonstrating, and asking questions. Frequent questioning strategies are particularly powerful for the following reasons:
Maintains Cognitive Engagement: Regular questions keep all students attentive and actively processing the material, rather than passively listening.
Strengthens Memory: Each question acts as a retrieval prompt, helping students practise and consolidate what they are learning.
Surfaces Misconceptions: Gathering responses from across the class reveals gaps in understanding early, before they become entrenched.
Builds Metacognition: Asking students to explain their reasoning encourages them to reflect on their thinking and problem-solving strategies.
Informs Next Steps: Responses provide real-time feedback, allowing teachers to make evidence-based decisions about whether to proceed, pause, or reteach.
In short, effective questioning turns a lesson into a dynamic feedback loop — engaging all learners, deepening understanding, and ensuring that teaching is responsive.
“Questions help students practice new information and connect new material to their prior learning."
Furthermore, using a variety of well-crafted questions provides students with a structured way to rehearse new information, strengthening memory traces and reducing the risk of forgetting. Each question serves as a mini retrieval cue, prompting students to actively draw knowledge from long-term memory and connect it to prior learning — building the robust schemas that support deeper understanding and problem solving.
So, how do we utilise questioning strategies to ensure they’re varied and include all students? Let’s find out.
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How Do I Ask a Large Number of Questions?
To make questioning powerful, it needs to be intentional, inclusive, and responsive. Before adopting the 5-step routine below, keep these foundations in mind:
Plan Your Questions: Prepare key questions in advance — including process questions — to avoid defaulting to shallow checks.
Make It Inclusive: Design for every student to think and respond, not just the confident few.
Respond to the Evidence: Use answers as feedback. If understanding isn’t secure, pause and reteach before moving on.
Questioning Formats
Effective questioning isn’t about letting a few confident students carry the discussion — it’s about creating a classroom culture where everyone participates and thinking is visible.
Here’s a video from Tom Sherrington’s ‘Rosenshine’s Masterclass’ series which you might enjoy…
Here are some tried-and-tested formats that align with Rosenshine’s principle, based on the excellent work of Doug Lemov:
Cold Calling: Pose the question to the whole class, give thinking time, then select who answers. This keeps everyone engaged and accountable.
No Opt-Out: If a student doesn’t know the answer, return to them after it’s been shared so they can repeat it aloud — turning a missed question into a successful retrieval opportunity.
Turn and Talk: Briefly pause instruction and have students turn to a neighbour to share their response. This ensures everyone rehearses their thinking out loud before whole-class discussion, boosting confidence and quality of answers.
Say It Again, Better: Encourage students to refine or expand their first answer, using more precise language or deeper reasoning.
Think–Pair–Share: Give students a short, focused discussion task (“list three reasons,” “summarise in one sentence”) before inviting responses.
Mini-Whiteboards: Get the whole class to write their answer and hold it up — providing instant, visible feedback on understanding and misconceptions.
So, here’s a simple process for adopting questioning into your classroom practice:
Step | Explanation | Example |
|---|---|---|
1. Frame the Purpose
| Set the tone by explaining that questions help everyone practise and check understanding. This reduces anxiety and builds a culture where mistakes are part of learning. | “I’m going to ask lots of questions today — not to catch you out, but to help us all practise and check what we know.” |
2. Ask, Then Pause
| Pose the question first, then pause to allow all students to think. Only after that do you choose who answers. This ensures every student engages, not just the fastest hands. | “What is the main idea of this paragraph? … (pause) … Priya?” |
3. Use Inclusive Formats
| Mix techniques to keep engagement high — cold call, mini-whiteboards, think–pair–share, choral response, turn and talk — so ALL students participate regularly. | “Everyone jot your answer on your whiteboard — 3, 2, 1, show.” |
4. Probe for Process
| Ask follow-up questions about how students reached their answer, so you can spot misconceptions and model good reasoning. | “How did you get that answer?” / “Explain your steps so we can check the method.” |
5. Act on the Responses
| Treat student responses as data — if below 80% are unsure, slow down or reteach before introducing more content. | “I can see step 3 confused several of us — let’s go over that again together.” |
Thoughtful questioning can turn a passive lesson into a lively dialogue where every student is thinking, practising, and learning more deeply.
Until next time — keep asking, keep probing, and keep every student involved!
Jamie
Where can I find out more?
Ask a Large Number of Questions Planner (Free Download)
To support your use of Asking a Large Number of Questions, I’ve created a Question Planning Template — a simple, printable table where you can plan your key questions, choose the formats you’ll use (cold calling, turn and talk, mini-whiteboards), and anticipate student responses and misconceptions. Perfect for making questioning more deliberate, inclusive, and responsive.
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Checklist and Slideshow
This week’s ⚗️DistillED+ resources are a Questioning Checklist and a CPD Slideshow. Together, they unpack the WHAT, WHY, and HOW of using effective questioning to keep every student thinking, reveal misconceptions, and make your teaching more responsive.
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