Rationale: 

Comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading. Students who are at this level are ready to learn strategies to better understand a text. A great strategy to teach students to better their comprehension is question generation. When we ask good questions while we are reading we are better able to connect information in the text to our background knowledge or to other information in the text. This makes the information more memorable and easier to comprehend. In this lesson, students will learn how to generate good questions while reading texts by understanding question-answer relationships (QARs). For time purposes, this lesson will focus on the first two types of question-answer relationships: right there and putting it together. A second lesson would cover  the final two question-answer relationships. The teacher will model how to create good questions and students will practice these strategies in an activity.  

 

Materials:

1. Time for Kids article Into the Wild (class set)

2. Time for Kids article On Thin Ice (class set)

3. QAR chart on flip-chart

4. 3 Questions Chart (see references) on flip-chart

5. Whiteboard and dry erase markers for teacher

6. Projector

7. Whiteboards and dry erase markers for students (class set)

8. Paper and pencil for students

9. Clipboards (class set)

10. Exit Quizzes (class set)

 

Procedures:

1. First, teacher will introduce the lesson to students. Say: Today, we are going to talk about a reading comprehension strategy called question generation. When we ask questions while we are reading, it makes the information more meaningful and memorable for us, which means we will better comprehend what we read. When you are able to ask good questions about a text, I know you are comprehending what you are reading.

2. Teacher will introduce QARs. Say: In order for us to be able to create good questions while we are reading, we need to understand the different types of questions. [show QAR chart] This chart shows the four main types of questions and where to look for the answers for each [before talking about each question, call on a student to read the description of that question on the chart]. [student read] In right there questions, the answer is incredibly easy to find. You can usually find all of the information you need in one sentence, and you might even find some of the same words from the question in the text. These questions don’t require that you do a lot of thinking, so they aren’t going to help you much with comprehension. [student read] In putting it together questions, the answer is still in the texts, but not in one sentence. To answer this type of question you are usually going to have to put information from more than one sentence together. These questions are better at helping you with comprehension because it helps you to put information together and make connections within the text. [student read] In writer and me questions, only part of the answer will be in the texts. To answer this type of question you’re going to have to use some of what you already know along with some information in the texts. These questions help you to make connections with the text and your background knowledge, which will help you to better comprehend. [student read] Finally, we have on my own questions. The answer to these are not in the texts; you have to use your own knowledge to come up with answers. These questions can be great for comprehension as it encourages you to use only what you know to create your answer. Today, we are going to focus on how to create putting it together and writer and me questions.

3. Teacher will introduce the three helpful questions to evaluate your questions. Say: We are about to practice how to generate good questions. Before we do, I want to go over a strategy we can use to make sure our questions are actually good questions. When you create a question, you can ask yourself three questions about your questions to test their strength. I call these the 3 evaluating questions. First, Did they cover important information? If your questions don’t cover information that is important to the point of the article, they are probably not good questions. Second, Did they bring information together? If your questions aren’t bringing information together and making connections in your text or background knowledge, they are probably not good questions. Third, Can you answer the questions yourself? If you aren’t able to answer your questions, they are probably not good questions. After you make a question, it is good to test it with these three questions.

4. Teacher will model how to make questions. Say: [pass out article Into the Wild] We are going to read this article and practice making good questions together. After we have practiced, you are going to make your own questions with a new article. Read this article from Time for Kids. When you are finished, look at me [Read article while students are reading and allow students ample time to finish]. Now that everyone is finished reading, I’m going to read it one more time out loud to make sure we understand [read article aloud to class]. Now that we have read, let’s go over how to generate questions from this article that might help you to better comprehend it [refer to QAR chart]. As we said before, right there questions aren’t going to help us with comprehension, so we don’t really need to make them. To show you what this question would look like, I will give you an example [write sentence on board: What is the name of the rainforest in the article?] The answer to this question can be found in one sentence in the article. [project article and point to information] If we want to make this type of question, all we have to do is look at our article and find any piece of information within it. From there, we can create a question. To make this question, I looked at the first sentence and saw that the name of the rainforest that this article is about. Therefore, we can ask, what is the name of the rainforest? Can anyone else make a right there question? [write students questions under teacher example] These are all great examples of right there questions. Remember, though, these questions aren’t really going to help us with our comprehension. It’s important to understand these questions, but we should not be making them to help us. Now, let’s work on how to make putting it together questions. To make this type of question, I’m going to connect at least two different pieces of information in a text. If we look at the last few sentences of the article, we see that several different types of wildlife is being described as “big”. For this reason, McAllister says the movie should be “on the biggest screen on all.” To connect these pieces of information, I might ask, For what reasons does McAllister believe that the film should be on the big screen? Can anyone else make a putting it together question from this article? [write students questions under teacher example] These are all great examples of putting it together questions. If we want to test these questions, [point to chart] we can ask our 3 evaluating questions and find out if they are strong [test all examples with evaluating questions out loud in class and discuss why they do or do not work].

5. Teacher will pass out article and go over unfamiliar vocabulary. Say: Now that we have modeled the first two types of question-answer relationships, we can practice how to create our own with a new article called On Thin Ice from the same magazine, Time for Kids. [pass out article On Thin Ice]. Before we read this article, though, I want to go over some words that are in this article that might be unfamiliar to you. These words are: perched, endangered, and species. The first word we are going to go over is perched. To perch is to sit or rest on something. If I am perched on the edge of my desk, what does that mean? [call on students for answer]. Now, I want you to pull out your dry erase board and marker and complete this sentence that I am going to write on the board using the word perched [Write on board: Because there was no seating left, I decided to perch on __________.] The next word is endangered. If something is endangered, this means it is at risk of becoming extinct, or becoming few in number. If tigers are endangered, what does that mean? [call on students for answer] Now, complete this sentence on your board [Write on board: The owl is endangered because it __________.] The last word is species. A species is a group of similar plants or animals that can produce offspring. If two tigers are in the same species, what does that mean? [call on students for answers]. Now complete this sentence on your board [Write on board: We know these two animals are in the same species because __________.]

6.  Teacher will have students read article and create their own questions in groups. At this point, be sure to leave the QAR chart, 3 questions chart, and the vocabulary up on display for students to use while working. Before students begin reading, the teacher will ask a few provoking questions about the article to increase student interest. Questions can be added to or modified. Say: Before we begin reading, let’s have a  discussion on what we are about to be reading about. I’m sure we have all heard of a polar bear. Can anyone tell me what they know about a polar bear? [call on students for responses. Build off of their answers if possible]. We just learned about the word endangered because it is in this article. Do you think this might mean that polar bears are endangered? Why might they be endangered? [call on students for answers]. Now, let’s get into the text and see if we can find the answer to some of our questions. Read this article to yourself. When you are finished, look at me. [Read article while students are reading and allow students ample time to finish]. Now that everyone is finished reading, I’m going to read it one more time out loud to make sure we understand [read article aloud to class]. Now that we have read, I am going to put you in groups of two. In your groups, each of you will need your article, a piece of paper and pencil, and a clipboard. In your groups, work together to create at least two putting it together questions about this article. You can create more if you want. Be sure to check your questions using the 3 evaluating questions. I’m going to set a timer. When the time goes off, come back to your seats and we will share some of your questions and evaluate them. [Give students around ten minutes to work on activity. Teacher can walk around and check progress and give students more time if needed.]

7. Teacher will ask students to share a few of their questions and evaluate them together. When this is done, students can turn in their papers and take an exit quiz over the lesson to assess the students’ learning.  

 

References:

 

Murray, B. (2012). Making sight words: Teaching word recognition from phoneme awareness to fluency. Ronkonkoma, NY: Linus Publications, Inc.

 

Elsea, Abby. Splash into summarization. https://ase0021.wixsite.com/mysite/reading-to-learn

 

Time for Kids article 1: https://www.timeforkids.com/g2/into-wild/

 

Tim for Kids article 2: article: https://www.timeforkids.com/g2/on-thin-ice/

 

animation: https://giphy.com/gifs/bbcearth-snow-winter-xUOwFQYeQrgoFjV3zO

​

​

​

​