As the children become familiar with the routine, procedures, and expectations of "Show and Tell", we later implement question time. "Any questions"? tells the audience the speaker has finished speaking and now it's their turn to be active listeners. The speaker can then choose three peers to ask them questions about their items. This question period also gives me insight of the child's thinking and ability for reflection.

Before introducing question time we have discussed what a question is and I have demonstrated asking questions to the speaker. In the following video clips you will hear the teacher asking questions to the speaker.

As a class we have also discussed "fresh" questions, (also known as open-ended questions) and "stale" questions, ( known as closed questions). Growing and learning with my Kindergarten colleagues we studied questioning techniques. We brainstormed the term "fresh" and "stale" and now I was teaching this analogy to my student teacher and together we taught the children. We showed them a fresh piece of bread and a stale piece of bread. As I reflect back on this exploration of learning, food always seems to connect our understanding. There is always some connection to food in my curriculum??!!

You may be asking what does fresh and stale bread have to do with questions? Well, here is what we taught the students. We asked the children which one they would like; the fresh bread or the stale bread?  All the children chose the fresh piece because it looked good, it smelled good, it tasted delicious and we wanted more! The stale bread had no appeal therefore there was less of an interest! This was a direct link to our questions. The children came up with what stale questions looked like/sounded like and what fresh questions would look like/sound like. Stale questions were highly concrete and predictable and fresh questions were original and explorative. As a group we wanted more of the fresh questions and stale questions were now considered less delicious."No thank you", to stale questions.

In the following video clip you will hear the speaker say, Any Questions?, three questions will be asked but the last question is one the students find as really fresh.

Question time is also a great time for the teacher to assess student's oral language development and level of thinking. If a child is still asking 'stale' questions, i.e. What colour is it?Where did you get it? Do you like it? The child is still at a beginning stage of inquiry. In our classroom if a child asks a stale question together as a group we think of how we can change that question into a fresh question! It's amazing and rewarding to see how we grow and learn from each other.

What I want for all students is to become powerful communicators of their ideas and to be able to reflect critically on the ideas of others. 'Show and Tell' can be the beginning for developing these orall literacy skills.