QuestioningStrategies That Work

By Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis

Sensational Strategies Predicting Connections Monitoring Questioning Inferring

Questions lead readers deeper into a piece, setting up a dialogue with the author, sparking in readers’ minds what it is they care about. If you ask questions as you read, you are awake. You are thinking. You are engaged.

~ Susan Zimmerman

Proficient readers spontaneously and purposefully ask questions before, during, and after reading.

Readers ask questions to:Clarify meaningSpeculate about text yet to be readDetermine an author’s intent, style,

content, or formLocate a specific answer in textConsider rhetorical questions inspired by the text

Proficient Readers…understand that many of the most intriguing

questions can not be answered in the text, but are left to the reader’s interpretation

determine whether the answers to their questions can be found in the text or whether they will need to infer the answer using their background knowledge, and/or an outside source

Proficient Readers…use questions to focus their attention on

ideas, events, or other text elements they want to remember

are aware that as they hear others’ questions, new ones – called generative questions – are inspired in their own minds

understand and can describe how asking questions deepens their comprehension

Where to begin?Model, model, model during Read

AloudStrategies That Work, Chapter 8 –

full of lessons for teaching questioning

QARThick and Thin Questions Anchor ChartsThe Q Food

The Q FoodQuinoa – pronounced “keen-wa.”Quinoa is a grain from the Andes Mountains,

first used by the Inca civilization. For more information, visit www.quinoa.net

The Q Food

QAR Question Answer Relationships

IN THE TEXT

Right There – literal question, answer can be found in text

Think and Search – how the information or ideas in the text relate to one another, must summarize, compare, contrast, explain

QAR Question Answer Relationships

IN MY HEAD

Author and You – answer not in the text, but you must have read the text to answer the question

On My Own – questions can be answered with information from the student’s background and does not require reading the text

Thick and Thin Questions

Each day after I read a chapter aloud from a class novel, I invite my students to write a thick question on an index card and add it to the card holder on our "Thick Questions" bulletin board.  I pick one thick question to ask the class before I begin reading from the novel the following day and lead a brief class discussion.

Who owns the questions in our classrooms?

The answer is simple: The learner must.