In Strategies that Work, Harvey and Goudvis state that authentic questions "are typically open-ended and encourage divergent thinking rather than one right answer" (p. 124). While reading the sample lessons, I really enjoyed the section Some Questions are Answered, Some are Not where the teacher lists all the questions that the students have and places different categories for questions that were answered, linked to background knowledge, inferred from the text, discussed, research to answer, and confusion. I really enjoyed how the entire class worked together to think of ways to answer questions. Personally, I would like to categorize my students questions to see how deeply they think about text. Even if I don't do it as a whole class, I would like to see those who make meaningful connections.
Do you think that we could ask questions such as the ones in the text to learn about our students understanding and opinions toward a text? What kind of questions could we model for the students so they understand and are exposed to authentic questions?
I also enjoyed this portion in the reading. I think we could easily use this technique in our Kindergarten classrooms because the teacher models the strategy first. If I were modeling this to my class, I would model my thinking and questioning aloud for the first few pages. As I finished each page, I would think of a question I had or something I was confused about and write it on the chart paper. As the questions were answered, I'd put an "X" next to them. I think students easily could come up with questions about the title of the text, the characters, events happening in the text, etc. I would continue this process for the next few pages until I thought my students understood how to use the strategy. Kindergartner's love to ask questions (although they sometimes turn into stories or comments) so I feel like they would be easily able to think of questions about the text. As students asked their questions at the end of each page, I would write their questions on chart paper. When the questions were answered, I would have the student who answered the question come up and put a "X" next to it saying that the question was answered. However, I think the most difficult part of using this in a Kindergarten classroom would be coding the questions. I would code the questions by answered questions and questions that don't have answers. Then as a class, we could think about the text by either discussing it, thinking about clues in the text, or questions that aren't answered. For the questions that don't have answers, we could make predictions or draw conclusions about how these questions could be answered.
ReplyDeleteJustine, how would you implement this strategy in your classroom? Would you code their questions in a different way?
I really like the way you thought of to implement this strategy into your classroom. I think it is good to teach students to question the text they are reading. Exploring the text deeply helps them to be more engaged. First, in kindergarten, it is very important to model. I would begin the lesson by questioning the title of a text. I would make questions about why it i titled that, what I think it would be about. I would also explain to my students that everyone is going to have an idea that may be different then their friends. There is more than one right answer. I would start reading a text and ask the students to think of something they wonder about or don't understand after I read each page. I think that doing this as an interactive read aloud would be helpful for the students.
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