What is Questioning?
Good readers ask questions while they read to focus their reading, clarify the meaning, and delve deeper into the text. By using the Questioning strategy, students formulate questions before, during, and after reading to make sense of the text . They then analyze their questions to deepen their understanding of the reading.
Much like the Making Connections strategy(see the Making Connections tab), this strategy causes students to analyze the text from their personal point of views. This analysis allows for a deeper understanding of the text. A study by Keene and Zimmerman showed that students learn and comprehend more effectively when they make different connections to a text. (Keene and Zimmerman, 1997) By asking questions about the text, the students look that the content from different sides, make these crucial connections, and more effectively learn.
Larry Lewin (2010) wrote an article for Learning to Read that highlighted question-asking activities to spark students to become more exceptional readers. The first of these activities is called Questions Mailed to my Teacher.
Using Questioning in the Classroom
To incorporate this activity the teacher writes their name and school address on the front of an envelope. Next, the students are instructed to ask questions about a read directed to the teacher and then place those questions in the envelope. The last student to insert their questions "mails" the letter to the teacher by giving them the envelope.
Tie it to writing
According to Lewis, this activity has three key purposes: "It gives kids practice asking questions and monitoring their own comprehension as they read, it introduces students to the crucial idea that questions have different levels of complexity, and it helps teachers diagnose students' comprehension." (Lewin, 2010)
After reviewing the questions, you will most likely find that some students understand the text while others are struggling. Based on the questions, you will also be able to identify which students are using high level thinking in their questions and which are not. Use this information to not only help struggling students but guide and help students practice asking "thick" questions, or questions that make you think.
This writing activity is just one tie that you can make between questioning and writing. This activity would satisfy College and Career Readiness Anchor Standard number 9:
Draw evidence from literary and informal texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
Refer to the following Questioning worksheets to help reinforce the question asking activity.
Much like the Making Connections strategy(see the Making Connections tab), this strategy causes students to analyze the text from their personal point of views. This analysis allows for a deeper understanding of the text. A study by Keene and Zimmerman showed that students learn and comprehend more effectively when they make different connections to a text. (Keene and Zimmerman, 1997) By asking questions about the text, the students look that the content from different sides, make these crucial connections, and more effectively learn.
Larry Lewin (2010) wrote an article for Learning to Read that highlighted question-asking activities to spark students to become more exceptional readers. The first of these activities is called Questions Mailed to my Teacher.
Using Questioning in the Classroom
To incorporate this activity the teacher writes their name and school address on the front of an envelope. Next, the students are instructed to ask questions about a read directed to the teacher and then place those questions in the envelope. The last student to insert their questions "mails" the letter to the teacher by giving them the envelope.
Tie it to writing
According to Lewis, this activity has three key purposes: "It gives kids practice asking questions and monitoring their own comprehension as they read, it introduces students to the crucial idea that questions have different levels of complexity, and it helps teachers diagnose students' comprehension." (Lewin, 2010)
After reviewing the questions, you will most likely find that some students understand the text while others are struggling. Based on the questions, you will also be able to identify which students are using high level thinking in their questions and which are not. Use this information to not only help struggling students but guide and help students practice asking "thick" questions, or questions that make you think.
This writing activity is just one tie that you can make between questioning and writing. This activity would satisfy College and Career Readiness Anchor Standard number 9:
Draw evidence from literary and informal texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
Refer to the following Questioning worksheets to help reinforce the question asking activity.
The following video clip provides an excellent example of all of the benefits of Questioning while reading as told by a group of young children. This clip provides examples of how the strategy is used before reading and how it helps students while they read. It also provides a great problem solving reference for questions that go unanswered while you read.
One final video clip offers a teacher giving a great explanation of the Questioning strategy and why it is such a useful strategy. Watch the entire clip to see her model questioning as a class and show the steps of incorporating Questioning before, during, and after reading.
References:
Keene, E. & Zimmerman, S. (1997). Mosaic of Thought. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Lewin, L. (2010). Teaching Critical Reading with Questioning Strategies. Learning to Read, 67(6).
Keene, E. & Zimmerman, S. (1997). Mosaic of Thought. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Lewin, L. (2010). Teaching Critical Reading with Questioning Strategies. Learning to Read, 67(6).