Every morning the children enter her classroom and read. After 25 minutes she calls them to the Oval. If they read something they want to share then they bring their book with them to an opened page. She calls on several children. With each child she ask a harem of questions to get their thought process on target with the thinking strategy or understanding. I'm talkin' about a minimum of 15 focused questions with response time. I have tried since I got back and I don't have it down yet. She continued to do this with text and student written pieces throughout her literacy morning.
The picture above is of a book she had a {fragile} child read on the ELMO (document camera). It was to show students how they infer when they are reading self selected text. This was not the first introduction to inferring but still a very powerful one. The cover of her text was slightly different but this is the book. You will see that she asks a multitude of questions in only 4 pages of text. My goal is to really dig in deep and study her pattern. I only wrote her questions and not the child's response because my purpose is the line of questioning and how it progresses.
Cover- Tell me what's happening on this picture. Think about what you know about mommy hens and daddy roosters. What do we call the babies? What is the chick doing? Think about what you know. The hen has a small sized waddle and cone. Who has the big, gigantic waddle and cone? Look at your picture clue. How do the mommy and daddy feel? You are inferring that. How do you know? What are their faces doing? What do you notice about this chicken? (Student begins to read.)
After page 1 is read- What is this picture of? Who is this? What was this? Reread. Who is this? How do you know this is the hen? How did you figure that out? You inferred that, but how? Reread it. How is the hen feeling? Why? What tells you in the picture that she is scared? What is her face doing? Look at the picture. What words tell you? Does that part tell you she is scared? Find the part. How does she say that? What other words tell you that she is scared? How is she feeling? You inferred that with picture clues and words.
Pages 2 and 3 are read with no questions.
After reading page 4- Who is this again? How do you know it's a rooster? Show me a waddle and a cone. How do you know the waddle and cone? Read it to show the clue. How does he feel? How does the picture show you he's scared? How is the rooster feeling? Why would the rooster be so upset? Who is Little Chick to rooster? What do you know about hens and roosters? Why is the hen upset? Why is rooster upset? Whose chick is it? There both what? What do you see here? We can infer that the chick belongs to both of them.
My noticings: Sue scaffolds her readers by supporting them with more detail in her questioning to guide the reader to their conclusion. She uses their schema in such a smart way. Sue never gave the child the answer outright...she made the child do the work. Her work is setting the student up for success through her use of exposure to real things.....they are waiting for their own chicks to hatch right now! She has them read about it, act it out, write about it and soooo much more.
My challenge for you is to try and ask questions of your students tomorrow. Notice, did it come naturally? Did you feel that you supported them through built schema? Where the questions flowing or did you really have to dig? Did the child get it right away or did you help them build conclusions? Sue taught like this all day!
Read her book, its so worth it!
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