The Importance of Asking Questions to Promote Higher-Order Competencies

Irving Sigel devoted his life to the importance of asking questions. He believed, correctly, that the brain responds to questions in ways that we now describe as social, emotional, and cognitive development. Questions create the challenges that make us learn. The essence of Irv's perspective is that the way we ask questions fosters students' alternative and more complex representations of stories, events, and circumstances, and their ability to process the world in a wider range of ways, to create varying degrees of distance between themselves and the basis events in front of them, is a distinct advantage to learning. However, Irv found that schools often do not ask the range of questions children need to grow to their potential. In this column and the next, using the story of Goldilocks and The Three Bears, we can learn from Irv about how to improve our question asking so that students learn more from text and from the world around them.

25 Reading Strategies That Work In Every Content Area 25 Reading Strategies That Work In Every Content Area Reading is reading. By understanding that letters make sounds, we can blend those sounds together to make whole sounds that symbolize meaning we can all exchange with one another. Without getting too Platonic about it all, reading doesn’t change simply because you’re reading a text from another content area. Only sometimes it does. Science content can often by full of jargon, research citations, and odd text features. Social Studies content can be an interesting mix of itemized information, and traditional paragraphs/imagery. Literature? This all makes reading strategies somewhat content area specific. But if you’d like to start with a basic set of strategies, you could do worse than the elegant graphic above from wiki-teacher.com. For related reading, see 50 of the best reading comprehension apps, different ways your school can promote literacy, or how reading in the 21st century is different. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Think Alouds Classroom Strategies Background Think Alouds help students learn to monitor their thinking as they read an assigned passage. Benefits Think Alouds are practical and relatively easy for teachers to use within the classroom. Create and use the strategy Begin by modeling this strategy. What do I know about this topic? Teachers should next (1) give students opportunities to practice the technique, either in pairs, small groups or individually; and (2) offer structured feedback to students. Initially, the teacher reads the selected passage aloud as the students read the same text silently. Further reading Davey, B. (1983). Olshavsky, J. Wilhelm, J. Wilhelm, J. 6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use with Your Students What’s the opposite of scaffolding a lesson? Saying to students, “Read this nine-page science article, write a detailed essay on the topic it explores, and turn it in by Wednesday.” Yikes! Let’s start by agreeing that scaffolding a lesson and differentiating instruction are two different things. Simply put, scaffolding is what you do first with kids. Scaffolding and differentiation do have something in common, though. So let’s get to some scaffolding strategies you may or may not have tried yet. 1. How many of us say that we learn best by seeing something rather than hearing about it? Try a fishbowl activity, where a small group in the center is circled by the rest of the class; the group in the middle, or fishbowl, engages in an activity, modeling how it’s done for the larger group.Always show students the outcome or product before they do it. 2. 3. All learners need time to process new ideas and information. 4. 5. 6.

Re begreppsträd Att bedöma läsförståelse Det finns inga test som kan bedöma läsförståelse utan det är pedagogen som är det bästa bedömningsverktyget (Westlund) Det är genom textsamtalen som man får syn på elevernas kunskapsutveckling (Liberg) Ett medvetet strukturerat arbete med läsförståelsestrategier gör att eleverna får verktyg att ta sig in i texter och förstå det de läser. Dessa verktyg använder vi både i textsamtalen i grupp, i par och enskilt. - att förutspå -att utreda oklarheter, nya ord och uttryck -att ställa frågor -att sammanfatta -att se inre bilder När vi samtalar om text med dessa läsförståelsestrategier som stöd ser jag som pedagog snart nog vilka elever som kan förutspå, ställa olika typer av frågor, göra textkopplingar, plocka ut nyckelord, återberätta med en röd tråd. Textsamtalen är för mig den viktigaste "källan" till bedömning men jag använder mig också av andra bedömningsverktyg. Vi fyller tillsammans i läsutvecklingsschemat och utvärderar elevens förmåga att använda de olika strategierna.

bedömningsunderlag