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'QUE' your Curiosity

Working with 'text on the table' allows students to both acquire information and create new learning.  The latter can best be done when students use readings to form and ask good questions. 
Students are very accustomed to answering questions - not so much creating them.  Our February Text on the Table Challenge will focus on students creationg questions based on a short reading of your choosing.  We will follow three similar patterns:
  • Find a good reading that is relevant and valuable to your course 
  • Format the reading to help students navigate the piece
  • Use a familiar literacy instruction structure: Before, During and After​
We are prioritizing QUESTIONS, not answers.   We want what students write or share to end with a question mark, with the purpose of revealing things like predictions, summaries and inferences.

BEFORE Questions

What types of questions produce good ​predictions?  Short readings provide opportunities for you to use things like related photographs or graphics to help cue questions.  Headlines or titles also can do this.
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EXAMPLES:
What does this person do?
Where are they?
Why are they postured like this?
What emotions do you sense?

DURING Questions

Active reading is essential to comprehension.  Last semester, we focused on things such reading with highlighters, post-it notes or using other annotation strategies.

For this, students should think about questions they would ask as they read.  For example:
  • What is evidence of the main idea of this article?
  • What don't I understand?
  • Is there a word or term I don't know?
  • What does not make sense?
  • Where would I want more information?​

AFTER Questions

An EXAMPLE
After reading, our focus is on ​inference.​ It's about finding deeper, more meaningful or connected meanings.  Often a reading brings froth an issue, concept or situation that begs for a response, answer or solution.  What kinds of questions would illicit those types of conclusions?
How might something like this all be put together? Building on the photograph above, here is an example:
Ready for a CHALLENGE?
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Win Donuts for your Department, Popcorn for your PLC or Candy for your Classroom - along with other prizes.  We will also give a prize to the department with the most submissions.  LEARN MORE
★ RESOURCES:  Types of Questions to Ask   |  Questions Stems to Use With Students 
COMPREHENSION matters in every academic area.   It opens the gateway to making sense of new information and growing students' ability to do something with it.  When students don't read they don't learn to comprehend.  Putting TEXT on the TABLE changes that and supports active and engaged learning.
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While students find
ease and comfort on
their phone or 
Chromebook...
They don't feel the same about reading.

★ ACTIVE Preparation

PREDICTION is a powerful preparation tool.

Think about:
Showing a picture or other visual that connects with the content of the reading. Ask students to make predictions before they read based on titles, pictures, captions or other background information.

What other information might compliment the text that might activate thinking about the purpose of what they are going to read?

★ ​ACTIVE Processing

​To develop deeper understandings about what they read, students need to go back and review text once they’ve read it.  Good reading questions require students to even re-read the text.

By journaling or saving work for later reflection, students process their own understanding in a more significant way. This helps students be metacognitive and helps you better look at growth over time.

For example, keeping a Main Idea Journal reminds students the importance of the main idea anytime they read.

Ready for a CHALLENGE?

Win Donuts for your Department, Popcorn for your PLC or Candy for your Classroom - along with other prizes.  LEARN MORE
Sample Text Selection
Click to enlarge

★ ​ACTIVE Reading

​For students, reading is generally a passive activity.  To more fully engage students, make reading more active.  Active Readers use certain tools.

Consider:
Index Cards are great for quick checks for understanding or summaries that can be easily collected and kept.
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Post-it Notes are great for both quick checks and marking passages or sections according to the purpose you set for the reading.

Highlighters give students a chance to mark specifics within a text, helping them read for detail.
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Partner Reading

★ ​Comprehension CUES

​Students need direct verbal cues from you to focus them on the skill and concept.

  • “When I read something like this, I _____________________________.”
  • Pivot from “That’s right, nice job” to “Can you tell me where in the text you see that?”
  • "Can you connect what the author said to something else we talked about in class?"
  • “What words or phrases in the text told you that?”
  • "What evidence can you cite to support that?"
​Choose a Reading
It does not need to be long or thick - it just needs to be relevant.
Format the selection into paragraphs or sections.  This helps students see where to stop, think, or otherwise process.
BEFORE handing out the reading, what can you do to prepare students to be active readers?  Ask them to make predictions based on cues you provide.
Once they have the reading, what will they do while reading?  Read with something in their hand to mark it up? Partner read? Stop and summarize? Read once silently then process as a group?
Once students finish, how will they process what they learned - not just what they read.  Can they journal or otherwise express what they now know?