@TeacherToolkit
Ross Morrison McGill founded @TeacherToolkit in 2007 and is widely recognised as one of the leading influencers in education in the UK and across the world. In 2015, he was named among The Sunday Times/Debrett’s 500 Most Influential People in Britain for his impact on…
Read more about @TeacherToolkit
Are teachers asking the right questions to strengthen long-term memory — and to support truly adaptive teaching?
This blog explores how the Question Matrix for adaptive teaching can strengthen teacher questioning and improve learning clarity.
Are teachers using the right questions for adaptive teaching?
This resource explores how the Question Matrix supports adaptive teaching, helping teachers adjust explanations, pitch, challenge and support in real time. When questioning is intentional and structured, teachers can check understanding more efficiently and make better evidence-informed decisions during lessons.
As a result, the Question Matrix has been used for decades, but its impact increases when placed visibly around the whiteboard. Teachers can instantly shift between retrieval, inference, explanation and evaluation, allowing for adaptive responses grounded in cognitive science. This blog unpacks how and why it works — and offers a downloadable set of large A4 question cards teachers can laminate and display.
Download the resource
Which questions reveal what students really know?
The Question Matrix combines question stems (What, Where, When, Which, Who, Why, How) with modal verbs (Is, Has, Can, Should, Would, Will, Might) to create 49 structured questions. As a result, this framework helps teachers move from basic recall to deeper thinking without improvisation or cognitive overload.
However, adaptive teaching relies on responsive questioning. The Matrix provides a consistent scaffold teachers can use to diagnose understanding, anticipate misconceptions and adjust instruction immediately. By displaying the Matrix around the whiteboard, teachers can access a wide repertoire of questions at any point in the lesson.
Download the resource now.
Consistent use of the Matrix also helps students ask better questions themselves — a key metacognitive behaviour that supports independence and self-regulation, both essential components of adaptive teaching.
Are teachers adapting teaching through better questioning?
Cognitive science shows that questioning is a form of retrieval practice, strengthening long-term memory and revealing what students truly understand. This is a cornerstone of adaptive teaching: adjusting teaching based on evidence, not assumption. Without structure, questioning can slip into guesswork or repetition. Consequently, the Matrix eliminates this by offering tiered question types that challenge students appropriately and provide the teacher with richer diagnostic information. This helps teachers refine explanations, re-teach content, or extend thinking as required.
Teachers can embed the Matrix immediately by printing and laminating the A4 templates and placing them around the whiteboard. During explanations or modelling, teachers point to a stem and ask targeted questions to probe understanding, stretch thinking or address misconceptions.
Departments can adapt the Matrix for subject-specific thinking — for example, “interpret”, “prove” and “justify” in mathematics, or “evaluate”, “hypothesise” and “challenge” in humanities. These adaptations strengthen disciplinary literacy while maintaining a cognitive structure that supports adaptive teaching.
Reflection questions for teacher CPD:
- How does current classroom questioning support adaptive teaching?
- Which question types do teachers use most — and which are underused?
- How could the Matrix help teachers diagnose misconceptions more accurately?
- What templates or scaffolds support SEND students during questioning?
- How could departments adapt the Matrix for discipline-specific thinking?
- Could the Matrix reduce teacher cognitive load when planning explanations?
- How might students use the Matrix in revision or independent learning?
- What professional development is needed to strengthen questioning routines?
- Where does questioning feature in your school’s approach to adaptive teaching?
- What changes might teachers see in students’ oracy and metacognition?
Teachers searching for effective questioning strategies, retrieval practice prompts or adaptive teaching tools will find the Question Matrix a simple, scalable method.
