putting hands up too much?

[abitpearshaped]

My DD is in Y5 at a small independent girls school. There are only 10 in her class, so you wouldn't have thought crowd control would be an issue.
However, DD has come back saying they are now only allowed to put their hands up to ask questions 3 times within each lesson (some lessons are double/triple), and have a system of cards to use to hold in the air to show how many questions they have asked.
This is apparently because a few girls were putting their hands up too much, and not attempting to do the work first.
It just seems a very negative way of dealing with a few girls who ask too many questions, which I didn't realise was supposed to be a bad thing .
I asked DD about asking to go to the loo, and that won't count as a used up question.
I guess I just want to know if this is a fairly normal thing for teachers to do.

At her age, it might be a way of ensuring the children a) listen the first time and b) apply what they have been told without having to be babied through it. Assuming she is 9 opr 10, I don't think that's unreasonable.

It sounds strange to me.I have always been told at parent's evenings that my DS should ask more questions and to actively encourage them!
I would imagine that because it is a small class, and will have plenty of time for individual help, the DDs are simply not thinking for themselves and expecting to be spoon fed. It is quite common to not listen to general instructions and then ask the question. What is then even more annoying is for the teacher to have given the general instruction, repeated it with the answer to the question and then have someone else ask the same question! e.g. The teacher says 'write the title at the top of a new page',child 1 then says 'do we have to write a title?' and child 2 says 'do I need to start a new page?' The teacher understandably gets irritated, because if they had listened they were both unnecessary. The cards ensure that they think about whether the question is necessary because they may need a genuine question later on.
It is just a guess-but very small classes can have their disadvantages.

If the children only have 3 questions to ask, it makes them think a little bit more about them- a little like the genie and three wishes! I wouldn't use them for general classroom organisation situations but when working on the carpet there are occasions where less is more!

It's a great technique, and can work superbly. Some students - especially at this sort of age - can become very dependant on teacher input; so they check/clarify every little detail rather than working things out for themselves or making sensible decisions for themselves.

Don't knock it: it can be excellent and students soon adapt and get used to not being able to ask so many questions.

We used it once on a school residential when students were continually asking us endless questions about unimportant issues and it was just utterly exhausting. Once we limited them to the number of questions they could ask it was a far better atmosphere instantly.

It's a very useful and fairly well-known technique, I think. It stops children pestering the teacher to do their thinking for them and become far more independent learners. Fewer 'mindless' questions also gives quieter kids greater opportunities to ask questions they really need answering.

Thanks for eveyone's comments; my knee-jerk reaction was to see it as a negative thing, but as several of you have said, maybe it isn't.

I think the teacher is being perfectly reasonable. Children of that age can often ask for help on every single question. By having a limit, means they judiciously choose their questions, and learn to think for themselves.

Thank goodness I teach a class of 26! I just say that I'm not going to answer mindless questions, and tell them to ask their neighbours to explain.

Are smaller classes more difficult to teach in some ways, as children expect individual attention?

I think some children like asking questions for the sake of asking questions, so this sounds like a fair idea. In fact, I may steal it for my year 7 class who do this all the time "shall I write the date?" "I only have one line left on this page should I start a new one?" "should I draw this with a pencil?"
I don't mind proper questions. But this sort of thing gets irritating after a while, as well as holding the lesson up.

Well...it's how they learn what you know, but they're not really learning how to learn like that IYSWIM - plus the retention rate from listening to an explanation is way, way lower than if they have to work the answer out for themselves.

OMG golgi - I thought 'shall I start a new page?' was a silly question for my Y2s!

Riven - some of the questions call for use of initiative rather than an answer!

There's a difference between asking a question for learning and asking it for the sake of asking a question.

By the age of 11 I'd expect them to show a bit of initiative on the "starting a new page" question.

I can only imagine the primary school teachers had some sort of "new page" rules which must be strictly followed, thus causing new page anxiety which takes a couple of years of secondary school to wear off.

I think that you are talking about different sorts of questions Riven. No teacher minds a DC asking intelligent questions about the subject. I think the card system is to force them to think for themselves. They are wanting the teacher to do it all for them and not using initiative or common sense or listening in the first place. If they are restricted, they need to be more discriminating and not waste them on things like 'can I start a new page?'

When I first read this, I thought it was a negative thing, but now having read the posts, I can see the benefits (am tempted to implement it at home for DS1 (4yo) and his 'why....?' and now DS2 (18mo) with 'wasssat?' - might have trouble restraining DS2 from eating his numbers though!)

I'm sure that a skilled teacher teaching a class of 10 children would be able to sense if one of them was genuinely struggling with a question and offer help, even if the child didn't put their hand up. This is something I have to do when I am leading university level practicals, because some students come from cultures where putting your hand up and asking questions is not acceptable (and I am not a particularly skilled teacher incidentally)

Fabulous idea - wish I'd thought of it when I was teaching. I did change 'hands up' to 'thumbs up' (year 3) as there were always the same children trying to touch the ceiling with their hands in their eagerness, and quieter children were being pushed aside.

As a teacher it was rather annoying having constant questions (usually from the same children) - hindered my teaching. Ironically it's normally the children who haven't got a clue what's going on who are the ones who don't put their hands up.

IME children don't ask questions unless they need to know. And sometimes the fear of the consequences should they get something wrong prompts them to ask about things they would otherwise not worry about, ie if they are going to get castigated for NOT putting the date or told their work looks messy because they didn't start a new page, they will want to ask in order to do the right thing.

This really putrs me off schools, that teachers resent them asking such 'silly' questions. Why would they bother to ask if they knew the answer already? They obviously need reassurance in some form.

'I think some children like asking questions for the sake of asking questions'

Sorry, but totally, totally disagree...this shows a real lack of lateral thinking imo. It's like saying children do anything just for the sake of it.

They're not thick - they have reasons, it's just we can't always understand them.

Juillet (good name btw!), some children do just love putting their hands up for the sake of it. I remember one child I taught who kept putting their hand up - and when I asked them what their question was, I could see their brain rapidly trying to come up with something!

Bill Claxton writes about this in his excellent book 'What's The Point Of School'. My new bible!

He talks about just this issue amongst many others.

He says 'Good learners can be awkward and inconvenient, but the fact that the teacher does not have enough time should not result in questioning being inhibited'.

He is interested in 'building learning power' and talks about a lesson that took place in a year 5 class on magnets.

A small series of experiments had been laid out around the room and the teacher explained that as well as doing experiments about magnets the children would be stretching their 'questioning muscles'. When they make their observations the teacher wants them to think up the kinds of questions they think a scientist might ask:

What would happen next?
If the magnet does that, what does it also make you wonder about?

The children learn how to question, they learn what sort of questions are good for what kind of purposes.

At the end of the lesson the teacher asks them to think of somewhere in their out-of-school lives where those sort of questions would be useful. The children learn to apply this sort of 'questioning' to swimming lessons or when they are watching a documentary on TV, etc.

This teacher made a small shift to her classroom practice and if this happened more often children would have more confidence to think and wonder.

I teach small groups of secondary-age children- I have dispensed with 'hands up' completely; it becomes incredibly unnatural in smaller groups of children and inhibits natural conversation.

It teaches children to take turns in conversation, and to assess the appropriate moment to ask questions, using each other as a cue.

I don't think anyone in board meetings puts their hands up do they?

Fair enough Pic and thanks btw!