Mentor Texts: Ask Questions

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Students are already naturally inclined to want to understand things better and question everything! It’s our job to help them direct that instinct to enhancing their understanding of a text! Books are magical journeys that can transport your thinking somewhere completely new, the perfect place to ask questions!

Questioning as a reading strategy thought is a little different than everyday questioning! While reading, you don’t always get your answers and you don’t need to! Engaging in the process of analyzing and questioning events, characters, and ideas of a text deepens students’ understanding of the text.

Engage Your Students in a Concrete Understanding of Questioning

I teach my students reading strategies through concrete experiences. Quinn the Questioner, a skilled reporter, comes to visit us to teach students how to strategically ask questions to improve their comprehension. Read more about how I teach questioning here!

questioning text, reading strategy, reading instruction, comprehension crew

Quinn The Questioner is part of my Comprehension Crew instructional strategy. The Comprehension Crew is a group of characters each representing an essential reading skill. Each character has a profession, song, gesture, and prop that provide a concrete representation of the reading skill. These characters are used to model and reinforce each skill both in real life situations and in text. The character helps students to understand, remember, and intentionally apply skills as they are reading. This teaching format helps you provide intentional, concrete, and meaningful experiences with questioning for your students. The reading character helps the skill COMES TO LIFE for the students and make it fun!

While Quinn reads, she is consistently using all of the question words to wonder things about the text! The process of questioning helps her to gain a deeper understanding, even without getting the answers! Quinn teaches students the importance of each type of question and celebrates their natural curiosity. Quinn also provides them with the confidence for questioning texts to ensure their understanding.

Click on the picture above to see this resource pack. The product includes a model lesson to teach questioning with any text and an abundance of questioning activities! Quinn can start helping you teach questioning today! Read more about how I use this strategy in my classroom here!

Teaching Questioning With Mentor Texts

questioning, mentor text books, picture books

Check out these picture books I love to use:

questioning, mentor text books, wordless picture books

Check out these wordless picture books I love to use:

Read more about how I teach questioning in my classroom here!

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