Questioning and Students’ “Inner Voice”
As we have discussed in previous blogs, using picture books with upper level readers has many benefits. If you have students who have a hard time tracking their “inner voice” and often get a tangled up with comprehension, you can teach them how to question as they read.
Student-generated questions are different than teacher-generated questions. This is a key distinction. Student-generated questioning is one of the strategies that proficient readers use. Questioning helps the reader by strengthening the inner voice, maintaining engagement, and clarifying ideas. One additional benefit of using this strategy is that readers begin to identify their own confusion. This is often a source of frustration for many readers, so when they can notice their own confusion, they can begin to correct it.
The questioning strategy can be used with fiction or non-fiction texts across all grade levels. We’ve provided a resource for you below and some higher level questions you can use to get kids thinking, writing, and talking on a higher level!
Name of Book: Sister Anne’s Hands by Marybeth Lorbiecki
Level of Text:
Guided Reading Level O, Lexile Level 580
Remember, the thinking can go well beyond the “levels”!
Brief Summary:
Sister Anne is a second-grade teacher who comes to a new school. Anna, one of her students, is a seven-year-old who begins to see the prejudice Sister Anne faces each day during the 1960s. By talking with Sister Anne, Anna learns how ugly racism is for everyone.
Teacher-Generated Higher Level Thinking Questions:
- How does the author reveal the setting?
- What can you infer about the time period?
- What is the significance of the hand in this story?
- What do you see as the various problems in this story?
- What is a possible lesson the author is trying to teach through this story?
- How do we know that Sister Anne is wise?
- What text to world connections can we make with this story?
- It is said that this author writes with “humor and understanding.” What evidence from the text represents this idea?
- How did Anna change throughout the story?
These can be discussed in collaborative groups or used as a way to increase comprehension through writing!
Supporting Resource:
This resource gives you titles and prompts to use with your students. In addition, there are several suggestions for how to have students track their thinking as readers so they can keep their questions and thoughts organized to increase understanding.
If you like this, then you might like this book as well:
White Socks Only (Albert Whitman Prairie Paperback) by Evelyn Coleman