Chapter 8- Questioning: The Strategy That Propels Readers Forward

This chapter begins by discussing curiosity and how curiosity leads to questions and questions lead to understanding. These questions will lead us into deeper reading to have our questions answered. The authors comment that by nature we are driven to find answers to our questions and to make sense of the world around us.

As adult readers, we know that we have questions as we are reading. But the authors remind us that kids don’t grow up knowing that good readers ask questions ( they just think good readers know all the answers). In school, it often seems that we are more concerned with anwers than questions. I know we have discussed this before and how in a perfect world we would be able to answer all the questions of our students. However, it is good to be reminded that our students need to know that their questions are important and that they matter. We need to model asking questions and finding answers for them. So that our students will ask questions and find answers to their own questions. This is important because when our students are doing this they are monitoring their comprehension and connecting with the text to make meaning. Ultimately, as reading teachers, this is the goal of our reading instruction as we work to develop our students into good readers.

The authors include many strategy lessons in this chapter to help students develop this questioning strategy. A few lessons that caught our attention were: to develop an I Learned/ I Wonder Chart in the classroom listing questions about a particular unit of study that would be answered over the course of the unit. Also, instructing our students in the difference between thick and thin questions by using sticky notes for the thick questions and sticky flags for the thin questions. The idea being that the answer for the questions should be able to fit on the opposite side of the sticky depending on the type of question that it is. Lastly, question webs are a great way to using a questioning strategy in the content areas for small groups to form into research teams and answer questions regarding a particular topic of study.

The chapter closed by talking about three different types of questions: researchable questions, lingering questions and authentic questions or assessment questions. The authors suggest that you tell your students when you are asking assessment questions to differentiate between questions that you already know the answer to and questions that need further research. Authentic questions, on the other hand, are usually open-ended and encourage higher-level thinking skills. The authors suggest using the following questions to help your students develop their thinking in the classroom.

*What makes you think that?
*Why do you say that?
*Can you elaborate on that?
*Can you tell me more about your thinking?
*How did you come up with that?

So, keep asking questions and give your students time to ask questions too!