To learn how to ask questions about a passage, students need to see how the best reader in the classroom, the teacher, does it. Teachers should model the strategy by reading a selection aloud to students, stopping when they find a detail to question, and then showing students how they read to find the answer. For example, before reading a passage, the teacher could reveal the title of the story, recite the first few lines and share with students a question about the topic of the passage. The teacher explains how the question can set a purpose for reading and model how to find the answer while reading.
Author and literacy consultant Kelly Gallagher uses a questioning strategy he calls twenty questions to get students to ask questions before they read a passage. Gallagher projects the opening paragraph of a story or nonfiction passage on a screen and reads it to his students. The students list questions they would want to see answered in the passage. As they call out questions, Gallagher writes them on down so they are also projected for the class to see. Reading to answer their own questions gives students a purpose and motivation for reading the rest of the passage.
Cris Tovani, a Denver-based teacher and reading consultant, uses annotation to get students actively involved in reading and thinking. She requires students to write their thoughts while they are reading on a copy of the passage, sticky notes or a handout. As they read, students often annotate questions about elements of the passage that aren't clear, then read on to find their answers. For example, a student might ask questions about a character’s motivation for actions in the story or they might have questions about the main idea in a nonfiction passage.
Reading expert Larry Lewin uses questioning strategies to promote critical thinking after students have read a text. Sometimes he has students write their questions in letters to the teacher. He also has them write letters or postcards to author. Students learn to ask questions that can’t be answered by the text alone. For instance, after reading a book about the American Revolution students might ask, “Were the Minutemen afraid, while marching toward the battlefields at Lexington and Concord?” As students become more proficient with questioning strategies they produce more thoughtful questions like, “What causes, in today’s world, would inspire the same level of patriotism and sacrifice that the Minutemen displayed?”