Dr. Kaback had asked that I write about how the companion lesson to the one she observed went, so here is a little synopsis. When she came in last week we were working on asking explicit questions of a text as we read. The following day we worked on implicit questions.
The implicit questioning lesson was a bit more difficult for kids, and was further complicated by the fact that as we sat down to begin the lesson, a group of electricians arrived to work on our promethium board. Getting the board hung is our number one priority now, so we had to be flexible. We were able to go to the computer lab for our lesson so we wouldn't be distracted by the drilling, but this shortened our time. Additionally, the media center is not set up very well for this type of lesson so it was challenging to manage the students and keep them on task. I was bummed that I had to shorten this more difficult concept, but I was able to do the read/think aloud portion and talk about implicit versus explicit questioning. During work time I asked students to write implicit questions on post-its the same way they had with the explicit questions the day before.
I found during our whole group lesson and as I was going around checking the questions kids wrote, that although they are very good at answering implicit questions, they really struggle to generate (or at least articulate) the question.
Thursday we continued to work on the concept and Friday was a special day in literacy with parent visitors so we did not have a lesson. I was impressed on Thursday that almost all the students were able to articulate the difference between implicit and explicit questions. This week we will continue to work on questioning strategies, and look more deeply at the kinds of implicit questions readers ask.
Thanks for the follow up, Meggie. I'm not surprised that implicit questioning was a more challenging concept for your students to grasp--are you? The ability to answer implicit questions is developmental--it comes with reading experience AND with the expectation that readers will think about those questions lurking behind the text. What does the author want me to think about? Why is this character acting this way? What am I learning about the world when I read this text? Those are tough questions--students who have a steady diet of explicit, known-answer questions in response to their reading will not develop the thinking muscles necessary to tackle the tougher questions. (I'm not saying this is your students' literacy history--on the contrary, I"m sure they've had a rich experience in the reading department. That goes to show how much time it takes to be sophisticated readers).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, if answering implicit questions is a challenge, imagine writing them! I struggle with that sometimes. Keep on keeping on. Your kids will get it, and you'll be so proud.
Here's an interesting lesson on rwt.org that you might like to check out:
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/inferring-characters-change-858.html