The Way You Ask Questions

Last week took a huge toll on my body. I came through the weekend with clogged sinuses, and some sort of cold. It is the same thing my wife had last week, so I am hopeful that it will be gone by tomorrow. I felt pretty awful on Saturday and then raced Beat the Bridge with a fever and all that jazz yesterday. Today I went in to school to get some things ready, then asked my Master Teacher to let me head home and sleep (to which she kindly said yes!).

Between sleeping, coughing, and fixing the bathtub drain (the chain broke on the plunger), I started to read To Understand by Ellin Oliver Keene. Keene was one of the co-authors of Mosaic of Thought, which has been recommended to me by quite a few folks. To Understand has been on our bookshelf for a few months now, as my wife bought it when I was purchasing school books in January. I figured that I didn't have much to read right now, why not take a look?

I'm not far along, but one thing is stunning: Helping kids to understand is a difficult job. She starts the book with the story of Jamika, and asking her (in an informal reading conference) if she understands the book she is reading. The reply was one that makes total sense- everyone asks me if it makes sense or if I get it, but no one ever told me what "making sense" means. That stopped me in my tracks, as I had to think about what it truly meant to understand something... and why that is important to the students we teach.

Additionally, Keene writes about holding high expectations for our students. That, I thought to myself, I am on board with, and is something I feel like I do a good job of. That was until I read how she posed a question/issue, and talked about expectations often be embedded in our language. For example:

1. See if you can think of a question about the story...
2. Think about all the questions you have as we read the story, and then pick one or two that you think will help us understand more about the story.

Seems silly no? But I did something like this last week, also on questioning. The first one poses the question as though they might not all get it, whereas the second one expects that all have questions. Don't we expect that all of us will have questions? As Keene writes, "showing high expectations for literacy learning is a far more subtle and precise process and requires far more consistent attention to the ways in which that we interact with children (15)."