Discussion 3

Questioning: The Strategy The Propels Readers Forward

          According to Harvey and Goydvis questions are the master key to understanding. By asking questions readers can clarify their confusions, stimulate research efforts, and take us into deeper reading. I know as a teacher and avid reader I am always asking myself questions and modeling this for my kindergartners. Some of my students have caught on to this strategy and will ask questions as well! For many of my students who are ESOL students they still do not understand what a question is, but I know if I continue to model it for them during reading they will grasp the concept before first grade!

          As readers students need to know what questions matter. They also need to understand when we ask a question there is always an answer that goes along with it. As a teacher when we see students being to ask questions and search for answers we know they are monitoring their comprehension which is what we hope for!

          The first strategy I came across was “Share Your Questions About Your Own Reading.” I use this strategy all the time, across all subject areas when I am reading with my students. This is how I model questioning for my students. With this strategy you can show students with sticky notes how you ask a question and then when you find the answer later on you can write it down and move the sticky note to where you found the answer. I am always modeling how to ask questions with my students, but many times I do not go back and find the answer to the question. After reading through this strategy if I use the sticky notes I will then be able to go back with my students and find the answers with them.

          The next strategy that I found interesting was “Some Questions Are Answered, Others Are Not.” Reading with kindergarten students many of them can give you answers for the explicit questions where answers are found in the text, but they struggle with the implicit questions. When doing our FAIR testing at the beginning of the school year I only had 3 students who answered these 2 questions correctly after listening to the read-aloud story. I know this is an area I need to focus on with my instruction so using this strategy would be beneficial for the majority of my students!

          I enjoyed this chapter on questions but I found many of the strategies were geared toward students in a higher grade level. For many of the strategies there are ways that I could differentiate the strategy to connect to my kindergarten students. Most of the differentiation would involve a lot of teacher modeling, but with my higher students during guided reading I will start using some of the questioning strategies with them.