Asking questions - the Tell Me approach

In 1993 the writer Aidan Chambers published a book called Tell Me which had an enormous influence on teachers of children's literature. Based on a questioning framework developed by a group of teachers, authors and advisors, the book outlined an approach for eliciting children's responses to the books they were reading. The Framework - different types of questions under the headings 'Basic', 'General' and 'Special' - is reproduced below, in a form adapted for film.

The question forms were worked on and refined over a long period, with teachers and children, in an attempt to ensure that the questions were generative - they created spaces for children to talk extensively - and that they didn't threaten, or imply a right answer. In the video, Learning to be Literate (1999), made by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) emphasis is put on the need for teachers - and children - to learn and to practise how to ask, answer, and think about these questions. The effect is more something like a conversation than a lesson.

The Tell Me questions: adapted for film

Basic questions

• Was there anything you liked?
• What caught your attention?
• Was there anything you disliked?
• Was there anything that puzzled you? That you'd never seen in a film before?
• Were there any patterns?

General questions

• Have you seen any films like this before? How were they similar? How were they different?
• How is this different from other films you've seen before?
• Having talked about the film, have you changed your mind about anything? Seen anything new? Been surprised by anything?
• Would you like to know more about how the film was made? What would you like to know?

Special questions

• How much time did the story in the film cover?
• Are there parts of the story that took a long time to happen but were shown quickly?  And vice versa?
• Were there particular things in the film - shots, sounds, images - that you liked or didn't like?
• How could you have made the film better?
• Has anything in the film ever happened to you?
• What would you tell other people about this film?
• How many different stories can you find in the film?
• Where did the story happen?  Did the setting matter, or could it have been set anywhere? Are there parts of the film that are especially about this place?
• Which character interested you the most?  Is that character the most important person in the film? Is the film really about someone else?
• Did you ever get to know what the characters were thinking or feeling? Or was the story told from the outside of the characters, watching them, but never knowing what they were thinking or feeling.

In 2003, the BFI approached the CLPE (Centre for Language in Primary Education) to join a collaborative research project investigating ways of working with film in Key Stage 2 classrooms. The CLPE introduced the Tell Me approach, but with an important development: instead of a questioning framework, they had been using grids.

Tell Me grids

A grid such as the one in the box below can be a very useful way of helping children to focus on specific features in a listening exercise. Play the soundtrack only for a film such as The Monk and the Fish, and ask children to think about what information it gives us about People/Places/ Story/Time. Can they hear anybody on the soundtrack? If not, does the music prompt them to imagine someone? If so, what kind of person? What are they doing? What do they look like?

People	Places
Story	Time

A class can be divided up so that individual groups take on just one category in the grid, or, after the soundtrack has finished, the class can be divided into groups to recollect information about one category.

Extension work can be set up by asking children to identify which types of sound give information about people, places etc; sound then can be put into grid form with Music/Dialogue/Sound effects or Silence/Atmospheric sound, depending on the film (many of the films in this pack don't feature dialogue at all). 

Music	Dialogue
Sound effects/Silence	Atmospheric sound

Music can then be put into grid form: Instrument(s)/ Orchestration/ or Pulse or Mood (major or minor or mixed)/Tempo or pace.

Instrument(s)	Orchestration
Pulse/Mood	Tempo/Pace

The advantages of grids is that they are truly open ended but still help organise children's watching, thinking and listening.

Other kinds of grid will help children to frame a response to a film after they have viewed it: the Tell Me questions include ones asking whether children liked or disliked the text - though this can be risky, as a 'dislike' answer can close down discussion. Other ways of shaping responses can focus on identifying patterns in a text, or similarities with other texts - not just films or books - and articulating puzzles or surprises that the film has prompted. A common experience even on INSETs with teachers is for people listening to live action sound (like that for Birthday Boy, for example) to be surprised that the source film is an animation. This should enable a conversation to open up about animation and sound, and why we assume that animation 'must' always feature 'cartoon' sound. Finally, a popular staple of reading, and of viewing, is for children to predict how a story might develop.

In all of these examples you can see how the grid headings came from the Tell Me questions; the questions on setting, story, character above can similarly be turned into grids.