Questioning Ideas & Resources

We just wrapped up a two week focus on questioning. I've been using The Homework Machine by Dan Gutman as my read aloud and my students love it. They are so curious about "Milner" and the book has naturally lended itself to questioning. As a class, we've created five chart papers full of questions! We spent the first week of questioning focused on becoming aware of questions that we have before, during, and after reading. I made question mark cards for them to hold over their heads when they wanted to share a question, and those cards just kept popping up! It was awesome!

These will be a part of a set that I plan to post later this week.

The next week, I worked on thin and thick questions. I gave them a "skinny" question mark card on a different color of card stock. Then, when they had a question to think-aloud, they had to hold up the right card. This was challenging at first, but after talking through a lot of examples and modeling daily, I can say with confidence that my students are now questioning wizards!

To follow up after whole group practice, the students used "Roll a Question" cards that I printed on card stock I made 5 different cards, with thin and thick questions in 3, and a mix of both on the other two. My students used them during buddy reading, guided reading, and even for independent reading. They are so easy to use...all you have to do is add some dice and you've got students excited about questioning!