Jan, I am a graduate student who is reading Debbie Miller's Reading With Meaning and Sharon Taberski's On Solid Ground. Both books offers great techniques for questioning. After reading about these techniques, I will definitely try these in my classroom in the future. Debbie Miller states that it is important to ask questions before, during and after reading. But what I found to be very interesting is that before you ask these questions, she has the students understand why questioning is important. She has a chart titled "Thinking about Questioning" which is divided into three columns. The columns include, " What do we know about asking questions?", "How does asking questions help the reader?" , and "How do readers figure out the answers to their questions?" I thought this was important because you need the students to realize that the importance of questioning is for the students to gain understanding as you stated. Sharon Taberski states that the best questioning technique is to provide time for answering and the best questions do not have more than one right answer. You want the students to have different opinions and not one right answer. When reading she writes that she uses the "Stopping To Think" strategy and demonstrates this to the class. She writes three steps on a chart to foster students thinking. These three steps include, " 1) What do I think is going to happen next?, 2) Why do I think this is going to happen?, 3) Prove it by going back to the story?" As you can see these questions get the students mind thinking because you are asking the students to explain why and then having the students prove their answer by going back into the story. You will get different answers and these questions could be asked at any point when reading because it is important to make sure the students are understanding what they read. From what I have observed in various classrooms and learned throughout my college courses, the best types of questions are questions that help students make connections. These connections include text- to- text, text- to- self and text- to- world. Also most importantly, model what you want the students to do. The students are only going to keep asking questions upon questions until you show them how a good reader asks questions to gain understanding. I have seen think-alouds performed by many teachers. When performing a think aloud, show students what type of questions they should be asking themselves. Show students that not only do you ask "what" and "how" questions but ask "why" questions. I hope this helped a bit. Danielle P.S. Both books are great books that offer many useful techniques. I would definitely recommend these books to anyone. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 5:46 PM Subject: [MOSAIC] Some help with questioning please
I am a Literacy Coordinator from Melbourne Australia. I don't have my own class any longer but model and mentor for other teachers. Our Grades 3 & 4 are introducing the strategies for comprehension. We are struggling a bit with questioning from the point of view of getting them to realise that questioning is asking questions to gain understanding; therefore you would only be asking a question when you don't get it. They ask myriads of questions but they are questions for questions sake if you know what I mean. Have read all the books and refer to them constantly. Can some one give us some tips? Jan _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive. ________________________________________________________________________ AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com. _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
