What+is+questioning?

It is through asking meaningful questions that students learn to monitor their comprehension. Good readers recognize when they are losing meaning, whether it be at the word, sentence, or text level and are able to ask questions about what strategies they need to use to help them comprehend (Block and Pressley 2003). Successful readers are able to both flexibly integrate questioning and to activate other comprehension strategies as they read. Good reading instruction should provide students with explicit instruction in developing questioning strategies to both actively construct meaning and to monitor comprehension. As a teacher, you need to introduce the specific questioning strategies that your students can ask themselves before, during, and after they read. Research shows that students who have been shown how to generate questions out-perform those who have not (Pearson, Roehler, Dole, and Duffy 1992). The development of questioning strategies allows students to become more strategic and critical readers. This module provides a range of examples to support your students in grade levels six to nine, in using questioning as a strategy for developing comprehension. This comprehension activity gives students a logical pathway for arriving at the Big Ideas in a text. Modeling during read aloud will show students how good readers arrive at their points of view about big ideas in texts, and how they justify their positions by relating them back to the text. It is difficult for many students to move from the facts in a text to logical and valid conclusions and to personal positions about the Big Ideas in it. Other students make connections with their own positions too early. They draw conclusions about the text that cannot be traced back to it. It is then difficult for them to go back into the text to reconsider other positions they could make and to understand that other conclusions could be drawn about the Big Ideas in it. Choose a text that is multileveled—where complex ideas and issues are embedded, and where facts provide evidence that support these. The text need not be long—many picture story texts for older readers are ideal for this. As well, there are many quite short novels available. The //House on Mango Street// and //Seedfolks// are appropriate. As you read the text to students, show how you list the questions you ask that will help you arrive at the Big Ideas in the text. Answer the questions as you read, making the connections with the questions very explicit. For more information, click on  A pivotal piece of text is extracted from the story, subjected to close questioning in order to determine its significance, the part it plays in developing the story, and the Big Ideas that are embedded in it. The Dig Deep Questions are the big open ended questions that lead to inferential thinking that expand the meaning gained from texts. Many students find it difficult to ask the big questions that lead to deeper comprehension. Many of their questions are literal and focus on detail and can be answered directly from the text. We want students to ask a range of types of questions of texts and particularly inferential questions as these are the questions that lead to a deeper comprehension. The first step in this process is to have the students generate their own questions and show how some can be answered from the text while others require students to make inferences. Using the same **Read Aloud** on two or three consecutive days you can show that some of their questions can be answered easily from the text while others require thinking about and help us gain a deeper understanding of the text. By modeling asking questions and having the students generate their own, you can show how this provides a framework for thinking about the reading.
 * Questioning ** is an important strategy in developing comprehension. Fluent readers actively and strategically engage when reading by asking questions. This helps them to
 * focus their reading;
 * delve deeper into the text;
 * clarify meaning;
 * critically reflect on what they have read.
 * What’s the Big Idea? **
 * Spotlights: Focus on Small but Significant Parts of a Story **
 * Spotlighting ** a pivotal part of a text and exploring its significance will help students understand how stories work to create tension and movement and how sometimes simple words influence our interpretation of text and the position we take in response to our interpretations.
 * Procedure **
 * Read a significant and pivotal extract from a story that is familiar to students, perhaps from a novel they have been exploring.
 * The extract should be able to be read at a number of cognitive levels.
 * Ask students to determine the narrator or speaker of the piece
 * the questions they might have for the speaker;
 * the situation in which the piece is set;
 * the connections to other parts of the story;
 * whether there are valid pathways connecting this extract to other happenings in the story;
 * the significance of the piece;
 * why this piece has been extracted for study;
 * what evidence supports this view.
 * Dig Deep Questions **
 * Reference: Di Snowball - Reading Comprehension Strategies Years 5-8 **