Questioning

Curiosity inspires learning, and questioning while reading takes us deeper into the text. As a kindergarten teacher I enjoyed reading about questioning strategies in the text this week. Immediately, I recognized that I frequently incorporate sharing my questions with my students. For me, this is just so natural. As I read, I have lots of questions. Some even force me to stop reading until I answer the question. Others, I write down and answer after reading. However, teaching this to my kindergarten students is not always so easy. They struggle with asking themselves questions as they read. I think that so often they just do what is asked of them, asking them to start questioning what an author is telling them can be difficult. One way I have begun to see success with questioning is with difficult vocabulary. I have asked them to raise their hands if they hear an unfamiliar word while I am reading. Naturally, I can usually stop reading when I know they will not understand a word. Slowly, I will begin incorporating other strategies to help them question as they read.

One strategy that I believe will work in my classroom is the "I learned, I wonder" strategy. As my students read or conduct research, I will record their ideas in a chart/list format. Afterwards, we can revisit and talk about each of our "I wonder" items. We can either research or talk with each other about the answers. I was inspired to try this with my students. This week we read a story about the sounds that animals make. Here is a copy of what we did. While it was quite simple, it really allowed my students to dig deeper into the text and ask their own questions.

Another stratgey I enjoyed reading about was that some questions were answered and others were not. Teaching students to categorize their questions and determine when further research is needed. A difficult concept for young students, but even with our chart above, we realized that we needed to find the answers to our questions in other places.

In relation to a proposal for change I have been working on I enjoyed the strategy for gathering information through questioning. In this strategy students write and create lists of information they have learned while questioning before, during, and after reading. For my students, I plan to have them each write down both questions and information they have gained by using sticky notes inside of their book. I intend to do this during my guided reading groups, so my students each have their own book and can proceed at their own pace.

This week I also did some more research on questioning during reading and came across this video that I wanted to share.