Teaching Tipster: Teaching Questioning to Improve Comprehension

After working with my students with this reciprocal teaching framework for the past month, I realized that they need a lot more explicit teaching on questioning.

I really like the questioning model presented in Jan Richardson's The Next Step in Guided Reading. Her model is based in the QAR  (Question-Answer-Relationship) model, but it's more explicit and gives sentence frames to better guide students.  Sentence frames are essential learning tools for my ELL students, but are helpful for every student.

I first introduced my interevention students to GO (literal, right there) questions. These questions start with Who, What, When, Where, and How.  Students can go directly to the text to find the answer to these questions. I modeled GO questions with a shared reading of the students' leveled text. Then, after some practice together, the students began asking literal questions with an instructional-leveled text.    

After practice with the GO questions, I introduced my students to STOP questions, or inferrential questioning. These questions are not directly answered in the text, but students have to use background knowledge, or the inferences from text to find come to an answer. These questions start with What if...?, I wonder why...?, What would happen if..?, Why would..?, How could...? Why do you think?... Again I modeled how to ask these questions, and began with teaching the sentence frame, I wonder why...?

I haven't yet introduced my students to SLOW DOWN questions. They need to become more proficient with GO and RED questions, before I introduce them to these more complex questions. For these questions students have to look more than on place in the text to find the answers to their questions. SLOW DOWN questions are cause/effect, compare/comtrast questions.

This model is especially helpful for my students as English Language Learners. They struggle with knowing how to start questions. The sentence frames give the students the academic language they need to ask questions.

Knowing about question-answer relationships allows the students to find answers to the questions their teacher (or the test!) is asking them. Do they go to the text? Do the make an inference? When you teach your students different question types, it helps them to know how to both ask and answer questions. Knowing how to answer to question well, also dramatically improves students' ability to comprehend a text.

If you don't have this Jan Richardson book, you should get it. She has great ideas to improve guided reading.

The Education Gap Widens- What Next?

First off, bear with me in this one.

I ran into this article on Facebook this week:

Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say

By SABRINA TAVERNIS Published: February 9, 2012

“The pattern of privileged families today is intensive cultivation,” said Dr. Furstenberg, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

The gap is also growing in college. The University of Michigan study, by Susan M. Dynarski and Martha J. Bailey, looked at two generations of students, those born from 1961 to 1964 and those born from 1979 to 1982. By 1989, about one-third of the high-income students in the first generation had finished college; by 2007, more than half of the second generation had done so. By contrast, only 9 percent of the low-income students in the second generation had completed college by 2007, up only slightly from a 5 percent college completion rate by the first generation in 1989.

James J. Heckman, an economist at the University of Chicago, argues that parenting matters as much as, if not more than, income in forming a child’s cognitive ability and personality, particularly in the years before children start school.

“Early life conditions and how children are stimulated play a very important role,” he said. “The danger is we will revert back to the mindset of the war on poverty, when poverty was just a matter of income, and giving families more would improve the prospects of their children. If people conclude that, it’s a mistake.”

Meredith Phillips, an associate professor of public policy and sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, used survey data to show that affluent children spend 1,300 more hours than low-income children before age 6 in places other than their homes, their day care centers, or schools (anywhere from museums to shopping malls). By the time high-income children start school, they have spent about 400 hours more than poor children in literacy activities, she found. 

..The problem is a puzzle, he said. “No one has the slightest idea what will work. The cupboard is bare.” 

I think about this gap a lot. I think about how central books, playing, and learning new words and concepts are in to daughter's small world. I think about how much time we spend at parks or museums, with friends, and traveling. I see how much of my daughter's knowledge and understanding of the world comes from the relationship she has between her parents, the books we read, and her small experiences.

I work with students that don't know English when they come to school, and our school is in a neighborhood with blight and poverty. Their parents are working hard to provide the best education for them, they want them to succeed, but the education gap between rich and poor continues to widen.

I see this reality daily when a 2nd grader can't name what a rake is when presented with a picture. Or, when a 4th graders doesn't know how to ask a basic question after reading a book (Yes, this is skilled honed from early childhood for many privileged children). These kids are trying their best, and their parents are too. But they need services and education earlier than kinder to help support their child's early development.

I want to give my child the best childhood. I want her to enjoy it in the moment, look back on it in fondness, and I also want her childhood to prepare her for her future. But I also want the same all of my students.

This article saddens me. It makes me think that everything that me and my colleagues are doing will never be enough. All low-income children need their own Harlem Children's Zone. I can't see any other way to close the gap.

These pictures excite me, but also make me realize how lucky our family is to have frequent experiences with books. I want every child to have these types of early literacy experiences with their loved ones:

Aunties tell a stories to the cousins after a family bday party. The book was in Swedish, so my sister made up a (rhyming) story for the kiddos.

This is what my daughter and her friend chose to to on their play date- snuggle in bed with dolly and books.

What is the solution to this gap?

Is RtI Promoting Anti-Racism?

As a staff, we've been taking time for Equity and Anti-Racism professional development throughout this school year. Our principal has been using the book, Everyday Anti-Racism to guide the staff's conversation. It can be a challenge to have these deeper conversations at the end of a tiring week, but it has been valuable for our staff to go on this journey together.


Read a description of the book below:


Which acts by educators are “racist” and which are “antiracist”? How can an educator constructively discuss complex issues of race with students and  colleagues? In Everyday Antiracism leading educators deal with the most challenging questions about race in school, offering invaluable and effective advice. 

Contributors including Beverly Daniel Tatum, Sonia Nieto, and Pedro Noguera describe concrete ways to analyze classroom interactions that may or may not be “racial,” deal with racial inequality and “diversity,” and teach to high standards across racial lines. Topics range from using racial incidents as teachable moments and responding to the “n-word” to valuing students’ home worlds, dealing daily with achievement gaps, and helping parents fight ethnic and racial misconceptions about their children. Questions following each essay prompt readers to examine and discuss everyday issues of race and opportunity in their own classrooms and schools. For educators and parents determined to move beyond frustrationies about race, Everyday Antiracism is an essential tool.

Today our principal asked us to discuss ways in which our school is actively showing equity and anti racism. Every small group decided that our school's work with RtI actively promoted anti-racism, and I whole heartily agree.

RtI (Response to Intervention) allows us to do away with referrals (which could potentially be rooted in institutional racism), and moves us to look at the student data. This model helps us to look at the students that have the greatest need, not just the students we may assume have the greatest need. It also promotes the mindset that we should give students the supports that they need to be successful- even if they need different support than their peers.

I've participated in (and led) many diversity talks throughout my time as an educator-- But the work we're doing as a school has challenged me to be more pro-active in preventing racism, especially at my school site.

Has your school done any work with Equity and Anti-Racism? What evidence could you point to that your school is a school that is actively trying to be anti-racist? I know we still have a long way to go...

Be well! Read on!