Questioning in role / hotseating

Purpose

Interaction patterns that arise in the classroom generally place the teacher as ‘expert knower and transmitter of information’. A typical cycle of discourse that develops is then: teacher initiates, student responds, teacher evaluates. This is at odds with a desire for students to think for themselves, to probe issues and raise questions, rather than trying to guess what the teacher or other students think is the ‘right’ answer. The following strategy is particularly effective at breaking this typical cycle by making a student the ‘expert’. Although the teacher is often responsible for initiating the task, the questioning and response is student-led, and much of the activity occurs in small-group interaction.

Teaching points

In questioning in role (also known as hotseating) one child assumes the role of another person or character and the other students question him/her. This enables both the person in the ‘hotseat’ and the questioners to think beyond first impressions in order to find out more about the character.
Questioning in role can be used to better understand a character in a book that students are reading.

• Read the book to the students, then ask them to reread it in groups of three or four. Ask each group to choose four characters that they will examine closely.
•  Students write down what they’ve learnt about each character, both from the text and the illustrations.
•  Once they’ve completed this task, students are asked to think of questions that they’d like to ask of each character.
•  Different students take turns as the character in the ‘hotseat’ who has to answer the questions.
  
  The answers to the students’ questions will almost invariably be inferential – they will only be implied by the text or illustrations. The students are identifying the gaps between the narrative and its wider picture. This means that the questions, and answers, will vary with each group as students bring their own insights and experiences to their interpretations.

More information

PEN 116: Hertzberg, M & Ewing, R. Developing our imagination: Enactment and critical literacy. Primary English Teaching Association, Newtown