AdLIT In Perspective > 2006 > October
Feature

Strategic Questions: Helping Students Develop the "Noticing" Habit

by Nancy Fordham, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio

Each semester, impressionable preservice teachers anxiously fill the rows of my university methods courses, their eyes wide with the daunting realization that their days as mere students are numbered. Knowing that they will soon be expected to plan, look, and behave like "real" teachers provokes in them a nearly disciple-like allegiance to my every word (OK...to some of my words).

Their counterparts―those self-assured and skilled teachers my methods students yearn to become―populate the seats of the graduate courses and faculty inservices I conduct. They troop dutifully into professional development workshops where I stand sentry at the overhead projector, ready to dispense handouts and pearls of wisdom. Many smile indulgently at me, silently communicating that I'm just one of many "experts" who file through their buildings over the school year. What, they must wonder, can I teach them that they don't already know?

The unexpected occurs every now and then, however, with both preservice and practicing teachers. Sometimes I leave a university class or faculty inservice surprised―and so does my audience. Together we have learned something we didn't fully grasp before―something worth remembering, something useful, something that sparks a subtle change in our thinking or behaviors. And often it's something relatively small, something fairly simple―some new perspective on an instructional idea, method, or behavior that causes a sudden epiphany―and, most importantly, has the potential to positively impact student learning.

Such is often the case when the focus of my message concerns teacher questioning techniques―specifically those aimed at helping students comprehend what they read. Teacher questions. Reading comprehension. Pretty mundane topics, really.

Not much new to learn there. Really...any educator worth his or her salt―even the neophytes―can effortlessly intone Bloom's taxonomy. Most can identify the three broad levels of reading comprehension: literal, inferential (interpretive), and critical (applied)―or as Vacca and Vacca (2005) put it, "reading the lines," "reading between the lines," and "reading beyond the lines" (p. 23). And with practice, most become adept at incorporating in their lessons questions that include all three categories. Furthermore, teachers at all levels can easily explain the rationale behind asking "open" and "closed" questions.

However, there's a bit more to consider here. Let's begin by reviewing some of what we know about reading comprehension. Chiefly, we know that it doesn't occur by happenstance. Proficient readers think strategically as they read. It doesn't matter whether they're reading Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck, 1993), an explanation of rational numbers in their math textbooks, a chronicle of the Crusades, or a description of sharks. At least two decades of research tell us that good readers are mentally active (Baker & Brown, 1984; Daniels & Zemelman, 2004; Duke & Pearson, 2002; Pressley, 2000), and we are beginning to understand the nature of that activity.

Among other things, skilled readers launch a stream of personal associations about a topic before they begin reading. If the subject is sharks, for example, they might immediately begin thinking ocean, great whites, hammerheads, dorsal fin, and so on, depending, naturally, on the extent of their prior knowledge. They also preview material and make predictions and personal connections as they read. They might swiftly look over an assigned chapter or book to survey titles, headings, bold print words, etc., and generate some hypotheses about what they expect to read. They may recall a vacation they took or a movie they saw (remember Jaws?) where they actually got a glimpse of sharks. While reading, they continue to make connections and:

  • Silently question the text (How close to shore do sharks generally swim?)
  • Infer (Since only three species of sharks have ever attacked humans, it's safe to assume that most sharks are not interested in me as a food source.)
  • Visualize (I can totally picture the shark's mouth with double rows of razor-sharp teeth!)
  • Monitor their comprehension, stopping to clarify any "fuzzy" words or concepts or to mentally summarize what they've just read (Hmmm―so "gel pits" in a shark's nose sense electricity―I'm not sure what that means. I'd better reread that passage.)

Much of this cognitive effort occurs at an automatic, mainly unconscious, level. When necessary, however, good readers apply these comprehension strategies quite deliberately. Whether conscious or unconscious, however, we want our students to do that work. In fact, they must do it if they are to become independent readers who understand the print before them, be it a textbook, a novel, a newspaper, or a driver's manual. As Lenski, Wham, and Johns (2003) note, "The judicious, flexible use of strategies when reading and writing is a prime characteristic of expert readers and writers and should be an instructional goal for every teacher" (p. 4).

OK―so if helping readers apply these strategies should be, as Lenski et al. (2003) suggest, a goal for every teacher, that means that whether we teach English, math, science, social studies, or home ec, we should be doing some intentional instruction in reading comprehension. That "instruction," by the way, should resemble considerably more than what Durkin (1978/1979) observed years ago when she expected to see teachers guiding their students through the fundamentals of comprehension. Instead, she saw what researchers refer to as the read-question-respond model (Alvermann, Swafford, & Montero, 2004). Teachers typically questioned students about content after an assigned chapter or passage. Students responded―or at least some did―and a brief discussion sometimes followed. What essentially happened then, and happens still, is that well-intentioned teachers use questions to assess rather than address students' comprehension―and there is a world of difference between the two approaches.

We know that one of the secrets to teaching students how to comprehend is teacher modeling, or demonstrating how we make sense of what we read. Teachers are especially proficient readers of their own subject matter (Tovani, 2004), and it's important that they take the time to contemplate how they think as they read. The insights they gain position them to adeptly coach their students through challenging passages: "You know, I'm not entirely sure about the meaning of plankton, but I'm guessing by the context that it probably refers to smallish sea plants and animals." While reading Of Mice and Men, the teacher might observe aloud, "I'm sensing that Lennie's fondness for soft things is going to play a key role in this story." Such demonstrations offer powerful exemplars to adolescents, enabling them to see the "nuts and bolts" of comprehension and to recognize that even teachers have to make the effort to mentally work things out as they read. When teachers augment their think-alouds with clear rationales and opportunities for targeted student practice, they add still more layers of reinforcement.

But I digress, albeit necessarily. Our focus here is teacher questions, and in that regard there are many options. McKenzie (1997), for example, parses questions into eighteen distinct varieties, including what he calls essential questions, probing questions, clarification questions, and hypothetical questions. Another category, however, which he terms "strategic questions," may not be as familiar to teachers (or students). Qualitatively different from the other question types, strategic questions, according to McKenzie:

focus on ways to make meaning...they help us while passing through unfamiliar territory by prompting us to think deliberately: What do I do next? How can I best approach this next step, this next challenge, this next frustration? What thinking tool is most apt to help me here? (p. 4)

Thus, strategic questions foster awareness of our thinking, or in scholarly terms, metacognition (Baker & Brown, 1984). While they can be asked about any topic or process, strategic questions are especially useful in fostering reading comprehension since they focus more on how to comprehend than on what has been comprehended. The good news, of course, is that one generally leads to the other (Duke, 2004).

My observations in the university classes and teacher inservices I conduct tell me that learning to ask strategic questions doesn't come naturally to most teachers and requires some careful attention to pedagogy. In general, teachers' questions tend to take the following form:

  • How many types of sharks are there?
  • Name the smallest shark.
  • What is the purpose of the dorsal, pectoral, and pelvic fins?
  • How might a skeleton composed of cartilage be advantageous to the shark?
  • Why do you think some sharks attack humans?

While these are legitimate questions―the last two even requiring inferential and critical reasoning―they are, by their very nature, designed to check recall and are most often asked after the reading is completed. Hence, they do little to help students construct meaning as they read―the point at which students most need teacher support. Teachers are often surprised to learn about strategic questions―and upon reflection, are even more surprised at how rarely they ask them.

For my part, I am surprised that even when preservice and inservice teachers are intimately familiar with the comprehension strategies they know students should use, and even when they know how to model their own thinking through think-alouds, they don't always merge this knowledge with their questioning techniques. An interesting thing happens when I explain strategic questions and ask my audience to devise on sticky notes two or three questions based on a simple informational book about sharks (Davies, 2003); only a handful grasps the subtle but important differences between strategic questions and the standard stock of teacher queries. A few teachers correctly craft examples such as these:

  • How many of you have ever seen a shark?
  • What can you tell me about sharks?
  • How do you think sharks might be different from other fish?

Note that these questions prompt students to activate background knowledge or predict―both excellent ways to stimulate interest in a topic and to coach students to think strategically before they begin reading. Almost never, however, do I see questions that encourage students to infer, visualize, clarify, or summarize―especially while reading.

Teachers are mightily surprised to discover, as we analyze their questions, that they tend to default to ingrained questioning models absorbed through years of their own schooling experiences. Once they realize this, the proverbial "aha!" moment occurs, and they are ready to reframe their questions. When the second round is shared, many of their questions are indeed strategic, inspiring the kind of thinking we hope students will use while reading:

  • What might you do to visualize a shark's body and its individual parts? (Visualizing, summarizing)
  • When you read that a shark has highly developed senses, what does that suggest to you? (Inferring)
  • Do you think predators like sharks are of any value to the earth's ecosystem? (Inferring, evaluating)

While any of these questions could be asked after students read, they are invaluable in guiding students as they read text material. Embedding questions (Weir, 1998) in a passage, either orally or in written form (with margin or sticky notes placed directly on print copies, for example), reminds students to stop and notice, to think strategically, and promises the reward of increased comprehension.

I have come to believe that reading well, like most skills we develop in life, involves at its core a lot of "noticing." Fluent readers notice how words are spelled, arranged, punctuated, and pronounced. Skilled comprehenders, likewise, notice the subtleties of an author's word choice, the "clues" he or she scatters along the way, the context, the vocabulary, and the text features that facilitate understanding. They notice when they are not noticing, and good teachers, regardless of subject area, notice when their students aren't noticing and take corrective action.

My ongoing experiences with teachers affirm that they can, indeed, learn new questioning habits. Old habits, however, don't die easily. Initial awareness that our questions may be missing the mark must give way to deliberate shifts in instructional techniques―and that requires sustained practice and monitoring of entrenched questioning habits: Are we asking the right kinds of questions at the right times for the right purposes?

Kylene Beers (2003) reminds us that "there is no one answer to why an adolescent struggles with reading" and that "while there is no single answer, there are answers" (p. 7). The answers, just like the students and their individual problems, are complex, but teachers can take many small steps to help. While asking strategic questions is just one remedy for improving students' comprehension, it is a viable approach to helping them grow the "noticing" habit. Teachers can easily modify their assignment protocols, reserving some reading for class time, where they can offer the modeling and coaching that students need to read well. None of this requires much time, and the bonus is that these instructional adaptations will enhance not only students' reading skills, but their content knowledge and ability to think―a win-win situation for everyone concerned.


References

Alvermann, D. E., Swafford, J., & Montero, K. M. (2004). Content area literacy instruction for the elementary grades. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Baker, L., & Brown, A. L. (1984). Metacognitive skills and reading. In P. D. Pearson, M. Kamil, R. Barr, & P. Mosenthal (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 1, pp. 353—394). New York: Longman.

Beers, K. (2003). When kids can't read: What teachers can do. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Daniels, H., & Zemelman, S. (2004). Subjects matter: Every teacher's guide to content-area reading. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Davies, N. (2003). Surprising sharks. New York: Scholastic.

Duke, N. K. (2004). The case for informational text. Educational Leadership, 61(6), 40—44.

Duke, N. K., & Pearson, P. D. (2002). Effective practices for developing reading comprehension. In Alan E. Farstrup & S. Jay Samuels (Eds.), What research has to say about reading instruction (3rd ed., pp. 205—242). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Durkin, D. (1978/1979). What classroom observations reveal about reading comprehension instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 14, 481—533.

Lenski, S. D., Wham, M. A., & Johns, J. L. (2003). Reading and learning strategies: Middle grades through high school. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt.

McKenzie, J. (1997). A questioning toolkit. From Now On: The Educational Technology Journal, 7(3), 1—6. Retrieved July 12, 2006, from http://www.fno.org/nov97/toolkit.html.

Pressley, M. (2000). What should comprehension instruction be the instruction of? In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 3, pp. 545—561). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Steinbeck, J. (1993, originally published 1937). Of mice and men. New York: Penguin.

Tovani, C. (2004). Do I really have to teach reading? Content comprehension grades 6—12. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Vacca, R. T., & Vacca, J. A. (2005). Content area reading: Literacy and learning across the curriculum. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Weir, C. (1998). Using embedded questions to jump-start metacognition in middle school remedial readers. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 41, 458—467.

Nancy Fordham is an associate professor of education and the coordinator of the Middle Childhood Education Program, School of Teaching and Learning, at the College of Education and Human Development, Bowling Green State University. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Toledo. Her research interests focus on literacy, multicultural literature, and technology in the classroom. She can be contacted at nfordha@bgnet.bgsu.edu.

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