Adaptable25mini Lessonsforaskingquestions

Asking Questions
25 Mini Lessons for Strategy Instruction

Overall Focus: Children everywhere have a natural curiousity about the
world, fostering this curiousity, encouraging their wonderings and showing
them how asking questions deepens their comprehension is our task at
hand.
Week 1: Focus Good reader and writers ask questions before, during and after to help them
understand the text better.
Day 1: Model the strategy with an adult text you are currently reading or (suggestion, use Charlie
Anderson) with sticky notes, so children can see your questions, read and think aloud all the way
through, reading and asking questions before, during and after you read. Set them up for the next 56 weeks, tell them what you will covering and get thinking about questions.
Day 2: Debrief and think aloud about the read-aloud and think aloud that you did yesterday. Go back
and re-read a few pages and show students how and why you asked those questions to help you
understand the text better. Tell them that you will ask them to do the same thing over the next few
weeks. During independent reading time today, they will write down one question on a sticky note
they have at any time in their reading.
Day 3: Ask, What is a question? and What is not a question? (A story, an answer). Ask, what is
questioning?
-Never ending wondering
-Things you grapple with
-The stuff that rattles around in your head and you want to pin down
-Being three years old and asking, Why? Why? Why?
Make class chart of brainstormed ideas.
Day 4: Thoughtful readers ask questions not only as they read, but also before and after reading.
Use Grandfather Twilight, or other anchor text. Write down questions students have B, D, and A
and make chart to code corresponding questions. Title chart Asking Questions Before, During and
After We Read Grandfathers Twilight.
Day 5: How does asking questions help you become a better reader? (Wait, and wait, . . .) Begin
chart, or have it ready, titled Thinking About Questioning (RWM, pg. 127)
3 part chart
-What do we know about asking questions?
-How does asking questions help the reader?
-How do readers figure out the answers to their questions?
(And add things to it during your weeks of study. )
On this day, also say, Readers ask questions for many reasons.
-clarify meaning
-speculate about text yet to be read
-determine authors style, intent, content, or format.
-focus attention on specific components of the text.
-locate a specific answer in the text
During SSRB, ask student to write down one reason why they might ask a question in their reading.
Week 2: Practice Asking Questions with Pictures, Poems and Familiar Stories using Reciprocal
Teaching
Day 1: Teach Picture This! Activity from Reciprocal Teaching. Using a large print or picture with no
words, or a book jacket or no book inside, tell students to come up with a question based on the
picture beginning with the following words: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? Do Day 1 as a
whole group lesson taking ideas from the students.
Day 2: Whole Group Practice with Questions in the Margin (Reciprocal Teaching). Teacher and
students read and discuss a big poster of a familiar nursery rhyme, and ask questions to be sticky
noted to the side margins. Students may practice this in their SSRB.
Day 3: Small Groups will again do Questions in the Margin with different familiar posters of familiar
nursery rhymes or familiar poems, (Why did Jack and Jill need water? Why was Jack wearing a
crown?) to practice asking questions.
Day 4: Give students copies of familiar rhymes or poems and students will work in pairs to write
questions in the margins. (Either directly or with sticky notes.) Students can share their work with
other pairs of students. Introduce the activity called Paired Questioning, where the language is,
I see a _______. I wonder______. (Write this on chart paper so the kids can refer to the
languaging.) Students can start of doing it on paper and then move to doing it out loud or start off
doing out loud and move to paper, although a paper component is not really part of Paired
Questioning. You can do it if you want to reinforce the language.
Day 5: Read a popular Fairy Tale like Cinderella or The Three Little Pigs. When finished, have
students sit eye to eye and knee to knee to generate three questions about the tale. Then do Hot
Seat for the main character, get willing volunteers who understand what they are to do.
****Directions for Hot Seat: Find 3 willing volunteers to will play, act and answer questions as if they
were Cinderella or a familiar main character from a book. Then ask 2 to step out of the room, while
1 of them sit in the Hot Seat while children in the audience ask them questions relevant to their story
and circumstances. For example, if a child was in the Hot Seat being Cinderella, an audience child
might ask, What was your life like after you married the prince? or Why didnt you take a watch to the
ball? Then the child playing Cinderella would give real made up answers for the questions. You
may have to show them first by modeling. (You dont want to end up with a lot of I dont knows.
Then repeat the activity with the other 2 kids immediately following, asking the same questions, and
compare answers in the end.
Week 3-Readers ask questions to clarify, while doing a week long author study of Eve Bunting. Pull
these books ahead of time, How Many Days to America?, The Wall, The Wednesday Surprise,
The Dandelion.
Day 1-When something does not make sense, good readers ask questions while they read. They do
not keep reading something that sounds wrong or does not make sense. Asking questions as you
read, makes a good reader stop and think and search for a fix-up strategy right away that is going to
make it sound right. Practice reading something wrong and use the strategy card to reinforce. Read
How Many Days to America? And use sticky notes to code strategies used.
Day 2-When good readers dont understand something theyve read, even when it might make sense
and sound right, they stop and clarify. They may go back and re-read, but asking questions helps a
good reader understand. If youre at a confusing spot, the paragraph before the spot can give you
the answer. Today you will partner read and at the end of each page your partner will ask you a
clarifying question about something you read and you need to be able to answer them. Read The
Wall and use sticky notes to write questions.
Day 3-More partner reading practice, asking clarifying questions about a word or a phrase that is not
clear. What is an abdomen? Why do they have three body parts? Readers use connections,
their schema and background knowledge to find possible answers answers to their questions. Read
The Wednesday Surprise, and make connection sheet to help find answers to their questions.
Day 4-In groups of four, students will work together on the same text, reading it together, practicing
using the cue card tent, and asking clarifying questions about each page of the book, non-fiction
works best. Read Dandelion and create pictures to help answer questions. Asking and clarifying
questions helps me stop reading long enough to see pictures in my mind. Ask a question --) make a
picture.
Day 5 Refer to thinking About Questioning Chart and ask, Can we determine this authors style
from these four books? Also ask, Do these books remind us of other books we know or have read?
And, Do they in turn help us predict? Wonder what the author was thinking when she wrote the
book. Have children make a Venn Diagram with 2 of Eve Buntings books to compare and contrast
aspect of style, setting, mood, problem/solution, etc.
Week 4 Readers ask questions even when the answers are not always easy to find.
Day 1: Re-read Charlie Anderson with questions aloud, but have questions also written on chart
paper, so you are ready to code them as follows (STW,p.84):
Why is the book called Charlie Anderson?-A
Who is the cat in the yard?-A
Why was the door open just a crack?
Do cats really like French fries?
Where does the cat go every morning?-A
Are these girls twins?
Does Sarah get jealous that he likes Elizabeths bed best?
Why did he get fatter and fatter every day?-A
Did they miss Charlie when they went to their dads on the weekends?
Do they like their dads house better?
Why didnt Charlie come home one night?-A

Is he going to be all right?-A
How come Anderson looks just like Charlie?-A
Which family does Charlie like better?
Day2: Categorize Questions. Using the questions from Charlie Anderson code and re-code them
based on the following system.
Questions that are answered in the text T
Questions that are answered from someones background knowledge or schema BK
Questions whose answers can be inferred from the text I
Questions that can be answered by further discussion and talking together D
Questions that require further research from an outside source OS
Questions that signal confustion Huh?
Have students pick one book from their book bin that already has question sticky notes in it, and have
students go back and code sticky notes in their bin books.
Day 3, 4 and 5: Read and re-read The Lotus Seed, thinking out loud and making connections to
How Many Days to America? As students have questions, demonstrate that while some answers
could be found right in the text, some answers would require us to infer or consult an outside source
to find the answer. Record childrens questions before, during and after reading. Day 3,4, and 5,
work through them, re-reading the text, and thinking aloud, about how we answered many of them,
coding questions, with T, I and OS.
Week 5 Focus: Aaaahhhh.when answers to intriguing questions are not found in the text and not
easy to infer.then what do we do?
Day 1: Read All I See by Cynthia Rylant. Reading, Thinking Aloud, Asking Questions, Making a List
of Questions (like Amelias Road chart on page 5 of RWM)
Day 2: Decide on a Burning Question. A burning question is one where the answer is not in the
text and cannot easily be inferred, therefore the author leaves the answer up to the readers
interpretation. Use a question web to record interpretations of a burning question. (like the one on
page 132, RWM)
Day 3: Read Monarch Butterflies by Gail Gibbons or another content area related book by Gail
Gibbons, and let students work in pairs to create a Team Question Web. (STW, p. 93)
Day 4-5: Read a non-fiction science text, ask questions, find answers in an outside source and make
a question/answer construction model like the tornado example on page 100 of RWM. Add to the
Thinking About Questioning chart. Encourage children to make questioning webs at home to help
them understand something better.
-by Jennifer Jones
Grade 1
Literature titles and texts used are attached below
Books & Texts Used

Ranger Rick Magazine
Nursery Rhymes and Fairytales
Charlie Anderson
Grandfather Twilight
How Many Days to America?
The Wall
The Wednesday Surprise
The Dandelion
The Lotus Seed
All I See
Amelias Road
Monarch Butterflies
Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller
Strategies that Work by Harvey and Goudvis
Mini Lessons inspired by Reading with Meaning and Strategies That Work

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Asking Questions

25 Mini Lessons for Strategy Instruction

Why didnt Charlie come home one night?-A

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