4 Discussion Strategies through Questioning to Improve Student's Close-Reading

            Most successful discussion strategies are based upon questioning of key themes and ideas in quality materials. To be able to produce key questions, we must stay away from questions that can be answered with short and easy responses. The article, “Asking Questions to Improve Learning” at The Teaching Center at the Washington University in St. Louis is a helpful resource in the do’s and don’ts in developing these questions (you can look at their website here https://teachingcenter.wustl.edu/resources/teaching-methods/participation/asking-questions-to-improve-learning/). The strategies I have chosen are of both a personal preference and appropriate for the grades and subjects I will be teaching in high school social studies classrooms. The four strategies are Key Questions as Learning Objectives, Thunks, The Question Wall, and Response Log. These four strategies are approached with the novel, Night by Elie Wiesel, in mind.

Key Questions as Learning Objectives:

            Key questions are essential questions that focus on central themes found in our chosen literature. The focus gives the students an objective approach as they participate in close-reading of the material. The question “should connect students’ lived experiences and interests to disciplinary problems in the world” (Wilhelm, 2017). They should take the information they have used to answer the essential question and have it be used in other applications found in the real world. This may sound like a daunting task of predicting what questions will work and which ones won’t, and it can be.

            We will want to make sure that the questions are not answered with a simple yes or no, that they cannot have an immediate response, and that lots of evidence is required to support the students’ answers. In some cases, our questions aren’t framed appropriately and will need to be revised while the class progresses through the unit.

            In the book Night by Elise Wiesel, students will be given a few essential questions before beginning their reading to be used as a reference as they closely examine the text and what the author was trying to portray to their audience. Questions could include, “How does such a large group of people follow cooperatively toward their torture, and ultimately death, without fighting back?” Or “How did such a scale of this size, with so many people involved (Germans, Jew, Hungarians, Gypsy’s, etc.) allow this type of brutality occur?” These questions, when given in the beginning of the unit, students will read deeper, search for outside resources and be able to connect major themes to events we are witnessing presently, like “Why did the President order air strikes on an air base in Syria last week?” (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39523654)

Thunks:

            “A ‘Thunk’ is a beguiling question about everyday things that stops you in your tracks and helps you start to look at the world in a whole new light.” Ian Gilbert author of Little Book of Thunks.

Thunks are a great opportunity to get students involved in discussion by thinking deeper about simple questions that only need to be referenced by their personal experiences. These questions are very useful in promoting “thought-provoking discussion” and are a great way to engage students easily. (Johnson, 2015).

            An effective approach to using thunks is to begin class with the question, or thunk, based upon what the lesson is about for the day. The questions should be simply asked (not simply answered) and should not have a right or wrong answer.

            In the book, Night, we could use different thunks, depending on where we were in the close reading. If the reading was around pages 65, 67-68 & 81, we could ask the question, “Does a god really exist or is it our faith in god that makes them exist?”. Or throughout the book, such as page 37, we could ask, “What make us human or is just being a human enough?” It would also be useful for students to create their own thunks while reading the book to bring to class for discussion to highlight areas they found to be interesting. (Simmons).

 

The Question Wall:

            I enjoy the question wall for the student involvement and to check for student understanding. In this approach, we would ask students to produce questions they would ask others who are reading the literature to answer. We would encourage a variety of questions if they were related to the close-reading. Students would write those answers on post-it notes. As a class, or individually we would identify which category each question would fit into. The categories would help us to plan our class time appropriately when we begin tackling common questions or themes that the students had chosen.

            Through my Pinterest search, I found an anchor chart I found most useful in our analyzing of the book Night. http://www.julieballew.com/A_Literate_Life/Photos/Pages/Anchor_Charts.html. 

The author of the chart title’s it “Where is your thinking?” The chart is geared towards elementary kids, but will be useful in high school classrooms as well. It has three different sections; Within the text, Beyond the text, or About the text. These three anchors could be used to organize questions accordingly. However, some questions may fall under two categories, such as “What is a concentration camp?” We might try to categorize that question by placing it on the line between both anchors, Within the test and Beyond the text, until the class is satisfied with the answer. The strength in this approach to identify areas that students might have challenges, allow for student choice, and to promote active questioning while they read.

Response Log:

            Response logs are used for students to actively think about the material they had just read. The response logs should be framed by either questions or statement prompts. An example of a question could be “What did you find interesting in your reading? Why?” A prompt could be to “Summarize the main ideas from the reading.” There are plenty of other examples found on the following website: http://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/literacy/19-reading-response-questions-self-guided-response/

 By having students use response logs in their reading, they will be focusing their attention to the details of the book that will help them in answering the questions or prompts. Teachers will also be given the opportunity to check for understanding and to adjust instruction accordingly.

           

Reading response logs would be most useful being assigned along with the reading that was to be done mostly at home. In the book, Night, students will use the response logs to guide their reading, finding portions of the text to support key themes and ideas within the book. The response logs could either be turned in for the teacher to review or become the basis for class discussion the next time the class meets. There should also be a section for students to ask questions related to the text so that the teacher may clarify meaning, such as “What is Blockälteste?”. Response logs, if used correctly, will help better prepare students for upcoming class discussions and understanding of key concepts in the book by using supporting evidence through close-reading.

References:

Johnson, S. (2015, October 10). Who'd have thunk it? Retrieved from Teach with ICT: http://teachwithict.weebly.com/tl-blog/whod-have-thunk-it#sthash.W8DVGBh7.8LRrBp64.dpbs

Simmons, C. (n.d.). Using ‘Thunk’ questions to improve participation and thinking skills at Dame Alice Owen’s School, Potters Bar. Retrieved from http://www.teacherleadership.org.uk/uploads/2/5/4/7/25475274/story_2_-_simmons.pdf

Wilhelm, J. D. (2017). Essential Questions. Retrieved from Scholastic: https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/essential-questions/