Discussion #3: Questioning Strategies for Struggling Readers

“Questions are the master key to understanding” (Harvey & Goudvais, 2007, p. 109). 

About two years ago I read a book called Teaching Content Outrageously by Stanley Pogrow (2009).  Basically this book teaches instructors how to make lessons across content areas engaging and exciting for students, from the “youtube” generation, who need to be entertained.  “Outrageous” lessons incorporate elements of drama (on the teacher’s part) but ultimately lead the students to read material with a purpose or question in mind. 

A sample lesson from this book may look something like this:

(note this was an ACTUAL lesson I created and taught to my class)

Subject:  Science
Assignment:  Read a nonfiction article about right whales who migrate from Maine to the Atlantic waters of Florida to give birth.  Identify problems right whales face as they migrate and what’s being done to help whales avoid these problems.

So this could have been a cut-and-dry lesson for students.  Read the text, answer the questions. 

This is how I “outrageou-fied it”

I entered the class wearing a shiny black garbage bag declaring that I was Betty the right whale.  You’d better believe that got their attention.  I told them some details about my life as a right whale and that I’d recently given birth a beautiful baby daughter Betsy, but that on our way back to Maine she had disappeared.  I pleaded my cause to my students, asking them to help me figure out what happened to my Betsy.  With this problem presented to them, they began to read the article about right whales with a different purpose in mind and ultimately, it was a memorable lesson that they won’t soon forget (“Mom, my teacher came into class wearing a trash bag today!”)

I bring this lesson up because I realized, through trying to teach content outrageously, that when students have a question or problem in mind BEFORE they read, their focus is more intense and engaged as they are reading.

This past week, I have been implementing questioning strategies presented in Chapter 8 of Strategies That Work (Harvey & Goudvais, 2007).  Below is an example of one of the strategies I implemented with struggling readers in my class. 

Strategy:  List and categorize questions to promote understanding

Procedure:

1.       Setting the Purpose:  First I reminded the students of strategies we have talked about that good readers use as they read to help them better comprehend a reading selection. These strategies include:  making mental pictures, making connections, predicting, empathizing with characters, and asking questions.  I told the students we would focus on the strategy of questioning during this lesson.

2.       Modeling:  I told students I would read a short article to them and show them how I asked questions in my mind as I read.  Instead of just thinking the questions, I told them I would write the questions down.  As I read, and they followed along, I paused after 1-2 sentences to jot down a question on a sticky note that I had about the reading selection.

3.       Categorizing:  After I went through the article and wrote down about 4-5 questions, I told the students that I was going to categorize these questions into five categories: 

a.       Questions that were answered in the text:  “Answered”

b.      Questions that are answered from someone else’s background knowledge:  “Background Knowledge”

c.       Questions whose answers can be inferred from the text:  “Inference”

d.      Questions that require further research:  “Research”

e.      Questions that signal confusion:  “Huh?”

I placed, with help from the students, each question into each category.

4.        Guided Practice:  I then let the students practice this strategy by themselves.  They read a short article, wrote down a few questions, and we all discussed and helped them choose which category to place the questions in.

Reflection:

I did this activity with two groups of struggling readers.  I emphasized explicitly and directly to them how important is it to think about what you think about as you read, because good readers actually think about a lot of things as they read.  The more we identify what we think about, the more we can make sure we are connecting and ultimately comprehending what we read. 

Half of my students took to this activity easily and jumped right in.  The others struggled at first and I had to continue to push them towards my expectations.  Overall, though, when we finally got through the assignment with everyone sharing at least three questions and categorizing, I found that the students had more questions and found it easier to categorize the questions as we went along.

I think this was an extremely valuable strategy to teach these students.  Most of all, my students were able to see that some of their questions were answered in the text.  At first, they were slow to realize this, but eventually began to look back in the article to see if the question was in fact answered!  Rereading!!!  Something struggling readers rarely do!  Also, the students were able to realize that they could use clues and make inferences from the text to try and answer their questions…a skill that is difficult to teach struggling readers. 

I will definitely continue to teach this strategy and more of the questioning strategies discussed in Chapter 8.

References:

Harvey, S. and Goodvis, A. (2007). Strategies that work: Teaching comprehension for understanding

     and comprehension. (2^nd ed.). Portland, Maine: Stenhouse.

Pogrow, S. (2009).  Teaching Content Outrageously. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.