Inquiry in a Classroom Informational Text and Questioning

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Inquiry in a ClassroomInformational Text and
Questioning

• By Stacy Price

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Research Question

• What strategies can I teach my 5th grade students
  that will help them to read informational text
  and comprehend through written response
  questions. 

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Comprehension Skills

• create mental pictures
• use background knowledge
• ask questions
• make inferences
• determine the most important ideas or themes
• determine the meaning of unfamiliar words
• synthesis information

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Informational Literacy Features

• Found in science, social studies, as well as
  other textbooks, newspapers, and magazines.
• Diagrams, charts, graphs, captions
• Has index, table of contents, headings
• Special vocabulary bold faced or italicized
• Has a particular text structure

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Sample Lesson for Informational Text

• Scavenger Hunt
• Have students use an informational reading source
  (magazine, newspaper, textbook) to hunt for
  chapter headings, glossary, index, illustrations
  to develop comprehension of the text.
• Students will gain an understanding of the
  purpose of informational text.

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Research Design

• Week 1
• Conduct a pretest using a selection of
  informational text written response
• Take note of student who use comprehension
  strategies
• Week 2
• Teach specific comprehension strategy based on
  initial observations
• Practice the strategy through informal
  interviewing and discussion
• Week 3
• Teach a second comprehension strategy based on
  initial observation
• Practice the strategy through informal
  interviewing and discussion
• Discussion of type of informational text
• Week 4
• Teach a third comprehension strategy based on
  initial observation
• Practice use of strategy
• Week 5
• Give a post test
• Observe use of strategies
• Have students answer a survey in regards to how
  they felt the strategies helped them

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Stats from Pre-test

• Pre-test was a couple sentences about the solar
  system and a chart explaining the diameters of
  the planets.
• Fifty-nine students took the mini-test. Of
  those 49 got both questions correct, 35 got one
  correct, and 15 got neither one correct.

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Inquiry ShiftInferential Questions

• Through my practice in the classroom, students
  struggled with not the reading of informational
  text but the answering of inferential questions.
• Students also refuse to go back in the text to
  find answers or concepts to help them.

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Simple Questions

• Too often, the questioning process has been
  reduced to an oversimplified search for
  prepackaged answers.
• Questions are intended to provoke thought and
  inspire reflection, but all too often the process
  is short circuited by the simple answer, the
  quick truth.

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What Does Inference Mean?

• Making predictions or generalizations through
  deductive or inductive reasoning.
• Deductive reasoning start with a general
  statement and explain how specific details relate
  to it.
• Inductive reasoning investigate specific
  details in search of an underlying, unifying
  principle.

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Sample Lesson

• Provide a selection of informational reading.
• Ask questions
• build on prior knowledge
• develop the main idea
• infer

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Sample Text
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Sample Questions

• Where do we get the lumber we use for making
  buildings, paper and furniture? (prior knowledge)
• How do some logging companies replace the trees
  they cut? (prior knowledge, infer)
• How does clear-cutting affect a forest? (main
  idea)
• How might the views of a person who catches fish
  for a living and a person who builds homes for a
  living differ? (infer)

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Conclusion

• As we talked about and practiced the strategies,
  students needed to be using, their scores on
  these types of questions improved.
• Having students write questions was also a neat
  way to have them explore the different types of
  questions.
• Strong questioning skills fuel and steer the
  inventive process required to cook up something
  new. Without such skills, we and our students
  are prisoners of conventional wisdom and the
  trend or bandwagon of the day.

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Where do I go?

• Increase the availability and exposure of
  informational text within my classroom.
• Continue to use instructional strategies for
  comprehension of reading.
• Continue to point out key features of
  informational text.
• Continue to challenge my students with questions
  that are beyond rote memory and telling of the
  text.

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Resources

• http//www.justreadnow.com/strategies/bloom.htm
• http//www.ncsd.k12.pa.us/pssa/reading/reading.htm
  
• http//web54.sd54.k12.il.us/schools/eisenhower/ISI
  P/Reading20Strategies/Info20Text/infotext.htm
• http//teacher.scholastic.com/professional/literac
  ypapers/duke.htm
• http//teacher.scholastic.com/products/instructor/
  nov03_infotext.htm