Prompt: In Strategies that Work, Harvey & Goudvis list several characteristics of 'authentic questions' (p. 124) that are typically open-ended and encourage divergent thinking. Pose one or more of your own authentic questions for your colleagues to consider about ideas in today's readings (sample units, or reading strategies) and share your initial thinking to start a conversation with your group.
For this blog post, I have decided to focus on one reading strategy outlined in Strategies that Work. This strategy is "Some Questions Are Answered, Others Are Not" (p 112-113). In this strategy, the teacher reads a book to her class that stimulates questioning. After she reads the book, students are asked to share what questions they had before/during/after the story. These questions are then recorded on chart paper and discussed as a class. Together, the teacher and the students see which questions were explicitly answered in the text, and then discuss those that were not. They categorize the questions that were asked into different categories (answered from text, answered from background knowledge, answered through inference, answered through discussion, answered with research, confusion). After this, the students were given opportunities to practice this strategy together, and then independently.
I have a few questions about this strategy.
1. Why would it be important to categorize questions in this way? Is it more important for our students to ask questions or certain kinds of questions?
2. If I were to write students' questions on chart paper like the teacher in this scenario, I am not sure that all of my students would have a question to add (maybe the question they had was already written). In this case, how can I be sure that all of my students are questioning in the way that I want them to? Do you think there is a (better) way to be sure of this?
