Question The Text
How many questions have you asked today? How many have you answered? Were they good questions? Or annoying questions? Let’s talk about asking ALL OF THE QUESTIONS. Kids are already experts at that, right? So it is our mission to get them to translate that into a beneficial reading strategy.
Honestly, at first I thought asking questions as a reading strategy seemed strange because I always focus so much on students answering questions as they read! While teaching this strategy, I saw the true magic of how asking questions helps students better understand a text. We know as teachers that coming up with intentional thoughtful questions is HARD! The small details students notice and wonder about, is so interesting and amazing.
I teach reading strategies using an engaging, concrete method. Let me tell you about it! First, Quinn the Questioner took time out of her busy reporter schedule to come help us learn how to question the text!
Quinn The Questioner
During my shared reading time, I use Comprehension Crew characters to model reading strategies for my students. Then we read interactively as they practice implementing the strategies themselves. Read more about that below!
Quinn The Questioner is a reporter who is excellent at asking a variety of questions to analyze every part of a situation! She loves to teach students how to do this too! As a reporter, Quinn knows that she does not always get direct answers from the people to questions and this is true in books too! She specializes in using ALL of the question words to think deeply about a text. The best way to teach students how to strategically question a text is to model it for them.
What is the Comprehension Crew?
Comprehension Crew is a group of characters each representing an essential reading skill. Each character has a profession, song, gesture, and prop that provide a concrete representation of the reading skill. These characters are used to model and reinforce each skill both in life and in text. The character helps students to understand, remember, and intentionally apply skills as they are reading.
Modeling While Reading
Questioning is usually the first reading strategy that I teach my students. During our shared reading (the first 10- 15 minutes), Quinn leads the class in a modeling the strategy then in reading in an interactive manner so the students can practice applying the skill. The students pass around the microphone as they use Quinn’s sentence frame to share what they are wondering. The sentence frame and choice of question words really help to focus intentional questioning rather than predicting or inferencing.
In my modeling, I am sure to intentionally plan to ask all kinds of questions so show how deep we are thinking about the text!
For an example here are some model questions about the cover of Beekle!
- I wonder why he is wearing a crown?
- I wonder what kind of creature that is?
- I wonder where he is going?
- I wonder who he is waving to?
- I wonder what that man is reading about in the paper?
- I wonder what the dog’s name is?
- I wonder what that man is listening to in his headphones?
- I wonder how he got to the bus stop?
- I wonder what time it is?
- I wonder when the bus will come?
Do you notice how none of the questions have IF? Kids lovveeee to say I wonder if…. but that is technically a prediction so I really try help them rephrase their thought to one of Quinn’s question words.
Questions Only Game
I used a short portion of this clip to introduce this game to my class. Then we played it! Inspired by their scene topic, our topic was Cinderella. I had a student play Cinderella, the step mother, and the fairy god mother. All I said was go after I explained that and the question magic that occurred!!! The students passed around Quinn’s microphone as they took turns asking questions. This game became a regular activity in our classroom. It really practices students use of various question words and listening to other questions to form meaningful related questions as a response! SO MUCH FUN!
Practicing With Pictures
In my Quinn The Questioner resource pack, there are task cards for students to practice questioning. There are photograph task cards and short paragraph cards to practice. It is important for students to practice questioning on a small scale to gain understanding and confidence in the skill. Often an entire text can be overwhelming, especially for younger students! Differentiated passages on worksheets with scaffolded graphic organizers and questions are also included to help your students break down the different types of questions!
Click here to read what mentor texts I use to teach questioning!
WANT TO KNOW EVEN MORE?!
These links will take you to blog posts about how I teach each specific reading strategy. *They are also written in the order I teach them in!
- Questioning
- Connecting
- Predicting
- Inferencing
- Visualizing
- Summarizing
- Clarifying
- Evaluating
- Synthesizing
