When teachers start to focus on developing a culture of thinking, their questioning tends to swing away from procedural and review questions towards facilitative questions that push student thinking and make thinking visible.

Taking his lead from Dylan Wiliam, Ewan McIntosh pleads with teachers to stop ping-pong questioning and try basketball questioning instead:

“Pose a question, pause, ask another kid to evaluate the answer child one gave, and ask a third for an explanation of how and why that’s right or wrong.”

In Creating Cultures of Thinking, Ron Ritchhart also supports the basketball approach,

“It begins to feel more like a basketball game in which we have lots of players taking turns with the ball, rather than a simple back-and-forth with the teacher.” (p. 104)

“the ball (question) is passed around and ideas are bounced off one another, as the ball is moved down the court.” (p. 213)

I have coached basketball for years. Now I’m playing it in class.