Juli Kendall's Weekly
Reading Workshop Journal
A MiddleWeb Listserv Project
Self-selected members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List are joining
together to explore the Reading Workshop and other ideas about supporting
young adolescent readers. Juli Kendall, a reading teacher/coach in Long
Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion. Juli is also keeping
a weekly journal of her own Reading Workshop initiative. Find out more about
our project at our Reading Workshop homepage.
You'll find Juli's background article here.
Links to many of the tools created by Juli and her colleagues are embedded
in these journals. Most often, when you click on them, a PDF file will begin
to download. You'll find a list of the downloads here.
Week #19
Getting Ready to Teach
the Questioning Strategy
Never let it be said that teachers haven't added something lasting to popular
culture. After all, they've prompted a whole collection of sayings. Who
could forget a classic like, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."
As my partner and I prepared to teach questioning to our students, we feared
entering the land of "can't."
In the world of reading instruction, the strategy of questioning has been
viewed as one of the favorites for improving students' comprehension of
text.
Curiosity spawns questions. Questions are the master key to
understanding. Questions clarify confusion. Questions stimulate research
efforts. Questions propel us forward and take us deeper into reading. --
Strategies That Work, Harvey and Goudvis, p. 81
For the last few months, how to teach "questioning" has been making
us anxious, hoping it won't end in confusion for our students. Our greatest
concern, since our kids have already started using questions in conversations
they have about text, is to make sure we don't,inadvertently squash their
emerging curiosity. Ninety percent of our students are English Language
Learners and, for them, questions can be particularly tricky.
Here are our steps for "getting ready to teach" the Questioning
Strategy:
1. Read Chapter 7, "Questioning, The Strategy That Propels Readers
Forward" in Strategies
that Work.
Weeks earlier, as a starting point, we read this chapter and used
-- the Strategy Lessons (p. 80-94);
-- the lists of books in Appendix A--Great Books and Author Sets to Launch
Strategy Instruction and Practice (p. 200-202);
-- and Appendix F-Response Options for Each Strategy (p. 270-273).
2. Make a plan (our curriculum map for January).
So when we were ready, we took all we wanted to accomplish and tried to
put it into a curriculum map. We had to make choices, and, of course, that's
not exactly what we wanted to do. Now, when we use it as a guide for our
instruction, we'll know if it really works the way we planned. Our current
curriculum map is covered with penciled comments and sticky notes as reminders
of what to change/add for next year.
3. Watch tape #2, "Modeling Questioning in a Reading Workshop,"
from Strategy Instruction in Action.
What a valuable staff development tool! While we were watching the
video, we could see how students learn to "use the questioning
strategy to enhance their own understandings of text." First,
we each watched it individually and then, better still, we watched it together.
We learned how to model our own questions for our students. To dig deeper
into meaning, we discussed the importance of rereading the texts we use
for Read Aloud. As we discuss the books in class, we'll keep notes and record
their questions. Tracking our students thinking will be easier once we know
their questions.
4. Start it up.
Getting together books and author sets (sets of books by the same author)
to teach this strategy -- so we won't have to do it again next year.
Getting organized -- coordinating how to share materials, a common need
in schools, since we will be working together and working apart.
Making bookmarks for Questioning -- It's clear that the kids strongly respond
to content and scaffolding in bookmark form. So my colleague, Outey Khuon,
borrowed an idea from the Guiding Question bookmarks
that are so effective with our students. She created a Questioning bookmark
with a two-column t-chart headed Questions/Facts. It's worth noting that
the kids love them! (She also made a bookmark
for Making Connections that lists the different kinds of connections.) Using
bookmarks to create a scaffold for learning is really powerful. Our students
become independent in their use of the strategies much sooner.
And now we get to teach.
[Editor's Note: It worked! See Journal #20.]
See Juli's February curriculum map
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