[ELTWeekly Volume 8, Issue 6 | February 15, 2016 | ISSN 0975-3036]
Questions are a common way for teachers to check for understanding, right? The answer we’re looking for is “yes.” Who hasn’t questioned a group of students to determine whether or not they understood the content? Unfortunately, not all questions are created equally. We propose four over-arching questions that can be used to scaffold students’ thinking about complex texts. You can tailor these questions to any book that your students are reading:
- What does the text say?
- How does the text work?
- What does the text mean?
- What does the text inspire you to do?
What does the text say?
The questions in this category require students to think literally about the text. These questions focus on the big ideas or general understandings as well as key details. We believe that understanding the text at the literal level is important in order for students to eventually understand a text at deeper levels. In fact, we think it’s impossible for students to make logical inferences about a text that they don’t understand literally.