Asking questions - the Tell Me approach
Little Pig is Flying
A questioning technique that works extremely effectively and complements the Cs and Ss in terms of exploring and interrogating texts is the Tell Me approach, developed by Aidan Chambers in relation to print texts Tell me, Students reading and talking (OUP 1993).
The framework of questions is divided into categories:
The technique does encourage close analysis of a text but also gives children opportunities for expressing their own views without fear of criticism, and has room for open answers leading to more questions and creative thinking, thus building all the time on an individual's response, and in a classroom situation allowing for group responses to be created whilst maintaining the integrity of an individual's contribution. During work on Starting Stories and Story Shorts and in association with the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) the BFI developed an adapted version of the Tell Me questions for use with film texts. Examples of these include:
Basic questions
- Was there anything you liked? (Can you tell us about that?)
- What things did you notice in the film?
- Was there anything you disliked?
- Was there anything that puzzled you? Anything you didn't understand?
- Were there any patterns in the film?
Obviously the responses to these and all the questions need to be followed up and depending on the age and language of the children they may need to be reiterated or rephrased slightly.
General questions
- Have you seen any films like this before? How were they similar? How were they different?
- (After subsequent viewings) Have you changed your mind about the film in any way? Did you see anything new or anything you didn't notice last time?
- What else would you like to know about the film?
Jack and the Beanstalk
Special questions
- How much time did the story in the film cover?
- Are there any parts of the story which took a long time to happen, but were shown quickly?
- What would you tell other people about this film?
- Which character interested you most? (why?)
The effect of using these questions is often surprising and, in order to further focus children's thinking and viewing, a grid structure can be used linking the questions to the key areas of film outlined in the Cs and Ss. Teachers can flag these up prior to viewing and help children to fill in their responses and use the results to move forward into creative work for example watch the whole film and then think about
| People | Places |
| Story | Time |
People
- Who did you think was important in the film?
- How can you describe that character?
- What did they look like?
- What did you see them doing?
That Fatal Sneeze
Places
- Where was the story set?
- Was there more than one setting
- What was that place like?
- Were there any settings inside/outside?
Story
- How did the story start?
- How did the story end?
- What do you think were the most important things that happened in the story?
Maril MacLeod and the Metagama
Time
- Was the story set in the present, past, future?
- How long did the story take to happen?
- How could you tell that it was day/night?
Changing the words that make up the grid will focus the children's viewing in a different way. Try dividing the task up in different ways to elicit a variety of responses.
- Divide the class into four groups, one to focus on each word.
- Ask the whole class to look at one word per viewing.
Ask children to work in pairs and share their responses together.
- Work on the grid just responding to the soundtrack of a film. Then repeat the exercise with images as well and look at the similarities and changes in responses.
