The Southern Baptist Academy Blog

By Mimi Rothschild

Here’s part two of “Questions Before, During, and After Reading.”  I’d love to hear your thoughts on it!

How Can You Stretch Students’ Thinking?

 

The best way to stretch students’ thinking about a text is to help them ask increasingly challenging questions. Some of the most challenging questions are “Why?” questions about the author’s intentions and the design of the text. For example:

 

“Why do you think the author chose this particular setting?”
“Why do you think the author ended the story in this way?”
“Why do you think the author chose to tell the story from the point of view of the daughter?”
“What does the author seem to be assuming about the reader’s political beliefs?”

 

Another way to challenge readers is to ask them open-ended question that require evidence from the text to answer. For example:

 

“What does Huck think about girls? What is your evidence?”
“Which character in the story is most unlike Anna? Explain your reasons, based on evidence from the novel?”
“What is the author’s opinion about affirmative action in higher education? How do you know?”

 

Be sure to explicitly model your own challenging questions while reading aloud a variety of texts, including novels, subject-area textbooks, articles, and nonfiction. Help students see that answering challenging questions can help them understand text at a deeper level, ultimately making reading a more enjoyable and valuable experience.

 

As students become proficient in generating challenging questions, have them group the questions the time they were asked (before, during or after reading). Students can determine their own categories, justify their reasons for placing questions into the categories, and determine how this can help their reading comprehension.

 

When Can You Use It?

 

Reading/English

 

Students who have similar interests can read the same text and meet to discuss their thoughts in a book club. Members can be given a set of sticky notes to mark questions they have before, during, and after reading the text. Members can then share their question with one another to clarify understanding within their group. Since students’ reading level may not necessarily determine which book club they choose to join, accommodations may need to be made, including buddy reading, audio recordings of the text, or the use of computer-aided reading systems.

 

Writing

 

Good writers anticipate their readers’ questions. Have students jot down the questions they will attempt to answer in an essay or short story before they write it, in the order that they plan to answer them. Stress that this should not be a mechanical process - as students write they probably will think of additional questions to ask and answer. The key point is to have students think of themselves as having a conversation with the reader - and a big part of this is knowing what questions the reader is likely to ask.

 

Math

 

Students can ask questions before, during, and after solving a math problem. Have students think aloud or write in groups to generate questions to complete performance tasks related to mathematics.

 

Social Studies

 

Use before, during, and after questions when beginning a new chapter or unit of study in any social studies topic. Select a piece of text, and have students generate questions related to the topic. At the end of the unit of study, refer back to the questions and discuss how the questions helped students to understand the content.

 

Science

 

Use before, during, and after questions to review an article or science text. You can discuss articles related to a recent scientific discovery with students and then generate questions that would help them to focus their attention on important information.

 

Lesson Plans

 

Lesson Plan: Questioning, The Mitten

 

This lesson is designed to introduce primary students to the importance of asking questions before, during, and after listening to a story. In this lesson, using the story The Mitten by Jan Brett, students learn how to become good readers by asking questions. This is the first lesson in a set of questioning lessons designed for primary grades.

 

Lesson Plan: Questioning, Grandfather’s Journey

 

This lesson is for intermediate students using the strategy with the book, Grandfather’s Journey, by Allen Say.

 

Lesson Plan: Questioning, Koko’s Kitten

 

This lesson is designed to establish primary students’ skills in asking questions before, during, and after they listen to a story. You can help students learn to become better readers by modeling how and when you ask questions while reading aloud the true story, Koko’s Kitten, by Dr. Francine Patterson. This is the second lesson in a set of questioning lessons designed for primary grades.

 

Lesson Plan: Asking Pre-Reading Questions

 

This is a language arts lesson for students in grades 3-5. Students will learn about asking questions before reading and will make predictions based on the discussion of the questions.

 

Lesson Plan: Asking Questions When Reading

 

In this lesson, the teacher will read The Wall by Eve Bunting with the purpose of focusing on asking important questions. The students and the teacher will then categorize the questions according to the criteria for each.

 

By Mimi Rothschild

In other news, new study shows water found to be wet. In all seriousness, it gets my goat that the results of this study would be considered surprising. This eCanadaNOW report explains:

A much-anticipated report from the largest and longest-running study of American child care has found that keeping a preschooler in a day care center for a year or more increased the likelihood that the child would become disruptive in class — and that the effect persisted through the sixth grade.

Parents, your children’s formative years are not worth it. Even if you can’t make those mortgage payments without a second income, consider finding work that would allow you to be at home taking care of the children.

The New York Times hits on an even more pressing issue, and one that should raise eyebrows among homeschoolers:

That the troublesome behaviors lasted through at least sixth grade, he said, should raise a broader question: “So what happens in classrooms, schools, playgrounds and communities when more and more children, at younger and younger ages, spend more and more time in centers, many that are indisputably of limited quality?”

If daycare centers are linked to bad behavior, couldn’t we extrapolate and assume that elementary schools are as well? I don’t need to conduct a scientific study to tell you that the average homeschool student is better-behaved than the average public school student.

As a society we’ve come to assume that the natural way for children to grow and develop socially is through constant peer-to-peer interaction. While peer socialization is important, parent-to-child socialization may prove to be more critical. Homeschooled children look up to their older siblings and parents, desirous of their maturity, knowledge, and social status. This is a good thing!

Public schooled children, on the other hand, spend a majority of their waking hours for twelve straight years surrounded by peers who are no more mature than they are. How can we expect our children to transcend behavior problems when we place them in such an environment?

By Mimi Rothschild

I would like to take an opportunity to discuss an interesting supplement to a homeschool education: Service Learning. Wikipedia defines service learning as follows:

Service learning is a successful method of teaching, learning and reflecting that combines academic classroom curriculum with meaningful service, frequently youth service, throughout the community. As a teaching methodology, it falls under the category of experiential education. More specifically, it integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, encourage lifelong civic engagement, and strengthen communities.

Service learning has several benefits.

• It helps the community
• It gives students an invaluable learning experience
• It is great for resumes and college applications
• It fosters personal enrichment
• It gives Christian homeschoolers a servant’s heart.

When Christian homeschoolers go out into the community to learn, they are given a hands-on experience. They are able to apprentice under experienced volunteers. Even public schools have adopted similar programs where students are required to spend a certain number of hours each year involved in community service.

There are a variety of opportunities for homeschoolers to reach out to those in need and learn something in the process. I will be listing specific opportunities throughout the next few weeks. Feel free to submit your ideas for service learning activities.

By Mimi Rothschild
Religion and Ethics has a transcript of a PBS special on home education featuring advocates such as Bruce Shortt and Voddie Baucham.

The show highlights opinions from both sides of the playing field. A professor declares that homeschool students are not well socialized. Another claims that the government has an interest in ensuring that homeschool children are exposed to beliefs outside of what their parents believe.

I don’t think that most homeschooled children run the risk of not being exposed enough to ideas that oppose their parents’ worldview. Every single media outlet is constantly sending messages to our children that conflict with a Christian worldview.

What Professor Reich is essentially saying is that its the government’s responsibility to make sure your children believe what’s right and what’s wrong on their terms. There is a “You birth the babies, we’ll take over from here” mentality.

He claims that he does not want to see homeschooling banned. Yet he argues that parents should be forced to expose their children to ideas that are antithetical to their own. Although I think it’s healthy for children to understand what the world thinks, I think that’s a decision that’s up to the parent. Yes, there will be kids lost in the system. There will be occasional abuses. Some kids will graduate from their homeschool program with poor social skills. However, that’s no reason to throw so much red tape down on homeschooling that it hampers all of the “good” homeschool parents.

Bruce says it best:

SHORTT: I think it’s ironic that someone with an obviously authoritarian agenda is attempting to lecture others, and unfortunately education seems to be one of those areas in which the failures astonishingly insist upon trying to regulate the successful.