Teaching Students to Ask Questions

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Students need to know how to ask questions.  If you teach in the state of Louisiana and are being evaluated by  "COMPASS" you know exactly how important this is to your evaluation.  Sad...huh?

I am guilty of being a question "asker."  It probably bothers those around me but I've never been satisfied with being told the bare bones of something.  I want to know more. 

Many students that I work with are deficit in this area.  Daily I hear questions being "asked" without question structure.  So I have begun to teach questioning structure to a group of 3rd graders. 
 
This is what we have done so far:
We have talked about the importance of questions and how we are going to study and use the structure.
We have brainstormed and charted "question words."
I do We do You do technique has been used.
I have modeled questioning.
We have practiced together.
You have tried independent questioning using a story passage and partner Kagan stuctures.

I intend to use this pattern over and over so that the students can master knowledge level questioning and then work toward higher order thinking and questioning.

If you are teaching struggling learners, please realize that they need distributed practice all through the day with multiple exposure to the questioning techniques.  This is true for most, if not all materials we expect the struggling learner to learn.

Please do not be one of the teachers who says "Well, I taught that last week!"
You haven't taught it until they have learned it.
Teacher, you are soooo important and have an immeasurable ability to impact your students lives.

I applaud you!

Distaughtia humor

DO you know the term "distaughtia?" Find the base word, prefix, and suffix to understand its meaning.  This video is funny!  The teacher is suffering from extreme distaughtia and it passing it on to her students!.

Kagan Quiz Quiz Trade Syllable Task Cards

Kagan structure Quiz Quiz Trade QQT is a great tool to evaluate student depth of understanding.  It is very important that the teacher "drop into" conversations. Here are a few of the cards I used for syllable understanding.

Acronyms...Humor

Double Dream Hands

How about this for a brain break activity?

Truth or Just Humor?

Something to think about in the new year...