Joy: I have to admit something. Please don't laugh or think less of me, but I need to know more about questioning. Although on every review I've ever received, questioning is cited as a strength (for me), I struggle with teaching it to students. How to get students to ask questions that go beyond the surface, how to get them to rephrase their questions, be more specific, etc. During lit circles it becomes very evident that they are clueless. I will hear them trying, but I struggle with getting them to stretch and go outside the mold. There's more to it than even Ellin has written in Mosaic, so even though I will go back and read it again, I need more information. Are there any books about questioning?
Judy: What wonderful questions you ask, Joy. I'm waaaaay behind you folks in To Understand (because I've been seriously sidetracked by a proflit that speaks to my current needs in writing), but I do have some thoughts about your dilemma. A few years ago I came to the conclusion that a lot of great learning happens through conversation. I went on a conversation quest, reading snippets and whole texts (Spiegel's Clasroom Discussion, Cole's Knee to Knee, Routman's Conversations, etc.). Two years ago my friend and I built a short unit based on 1 chapter in Routman's work; we tried to teach the kids how to have a literary conversation. Routman bases this on asking questions about text. We broke down her chapter and really taught, modeled, gave stems. Our goal was for small groups to sustain an independent (no teacher) literary conversation for at least 10 minutes. We did this in Spring a year ago. Last year we taught it in January and we were amazed how it sustained many conversations--across content. When we taught Synthesis at the end of the year, the kids incorporated the questioning and conversational techniques we'd taught them and we were thrilled. We had started with questions to spur conversation, but the kids went so much further, from questions about text to "I think..." and "I wonder..." to "Piggybacking on what Garfield said..." and (my personal favorite) "You know how Jericho said blah blah and Jessmina said blah blah, well, if you put those together and then think about blah blah..." Sorry, I've rambled and am not sure I've described our work very well. _______________________________________________ Understand mailing list [email protected] http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/listinfo/understand_literacyworkshop.org
