Framing Our Reading | Part 2: Guided Thinking

This week for our “Framing Our Reading” assignment, we were asked to look at reading strategies to use that would help guide the thinking processes of students as they read a text. Last week, my partner, Jennie, and I chose our own reading strategies to try when reading the same article. It was difficult to know how to pick and structure activities based on our strategies without having already read the text. Buehl (2014) identifies that the first guideline for choosing effective reading strategies is to make sure the strategy aligns with type of text.

           For this week’s assignment, we each chose an article to read and then chose an appropriate strategy to have the other person use when reading the article for the first time. After completing the reading and reading strategy activity given to us by the other person, we discussed how the using strategy affected our thinking processes. I chose to have Jennie read a 2014 Scientific American article that discussed the effect of climate change on incidence of malaria in high altitude regions (see link in the Table 1). To guide her thinking, I had her complete a Question-Answer Relationships (QAR) activity.

Table 1

	Text Citation or Link	Rationale for Choosing	Text Frame(s)	Strategies Used and Resource
Guiding Thinking Example	Scientific American:  As Temperatures Climb, So Does Malaria	Identifies a current issue facing the world. Provides information on a consequence of climate change that isn’t immediately obvious. Discusses difficulties faced by scientists doing research in the real world.	Cause/effect Goal/Action/Outcome	Self- Questioning: Question-Answer Relationships (McLaughlin, 2010, p. 71)

The QAR activity is outlined in McLaughlin (2010) as a self-questioning strategy. The goal of the self-questioning strategy is to have readers come up with questions as they read, and then to look for answers to these questions. McLaughlin (2010) compares this approach to one that would be used when creating a scientific experiment. I chose to use the self-questioning reading strategy this week because I think that question generation is an important skill for individuals interested in science to develop.  A QAR activity outlines two different sources for information (prior knowledge and the text) and two types of question and answer relationships for each source. This results in 4 different types of QARs. See Table 2 below for more descriptions of the four relationships.

Table 2

Question-Answer Relationship	Description
Right There	The answer is stated in the text
Think and Search	The answer is constructed from multiple places in the text
On My Own	The answer relies on the reader’s prior knowledge
Author and Me	The answer connects prior knowledge with information from the text

When I provided Jennie with this assignment, I provided a description of the 4 QARs and an example question for each type (see Table 3). To complete the assignment, Jennie had to answer each example question, then create one question of each type and answer it.  The goal of this assignment was not only to determine if the reader could retrieve information from the article, but also to see if she was engaged enough with the text that she could formulate her own questions. This activity encourages students to make connections between their prior knowledge and the text, as well as generate questions. These two strategies are critical for reading comprehension (Buehl, 2014).

Table 3

Question-Answer Relationship	Example Question
Right There	What kind of differences does Kevin Lafferty of the U.S. Geological Survey identify as being controlled for when you can study malaria in the same country but at different altitudes?
Think and Search	According to the article, what are the three reasons that warm temperatures are increasing the incidence of malaria?
On My Own	What other public health concerns are associated with a warming climate?
Author and Me	What effect will the "increase of malaria burden" have on both the highland cities affected and the world as a whole?

            After completing the activity, Jennie explained to me that she thought it was necessary to makes sure students understand the different QAR types before they are asked to create questions. She noted that having example questions helped her to better understand the differences between the relationships. She also expressed that question generation helps to minimize the chance that students will merely skim the material. Students will most likely need a more complete understanding of the text in order to know which questions to ask. One concern was that this strategy might not work well with younger students. It might be more difficult, for example, for middle school students to differentiate between the QARs than it would be for high school students. I agree with Jennie’s assertion that this should be used as a more advanced reading activity.

             Overall, it was clear that this self-questioning strategy helps the reader to highlight connections within the text, as well as connections to the prior knowledge. Students are challenged to not only find answers, but to also explore what they have not yet learned. With some refining, this would be a strategy that I would definitely use to guide my students through reading a scientific text.

            For Jennie’s activity, I read an article about the effect of carbon dioxide levels on the nutritional content of the pollen of goldenrod, which makes up part of the diet of bees. I generated questions before, during, and after reading using a B/D/A questioning chart. To read more about her use of the self-questioning reading strategy, visit her blog: http://teachlearnexplore2016.blogspot.com/

References

Buehl, D. (2014).  Classroom strategies for Interactive Learning.  International Reading Association.

Irfan, U. (2014, March 7). As temperatures climb, so does malaria. Scientific American. Retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/as-temperatures-climb-so-does-malaria/

McLaughlin, M. (2010).   Content Area Reading:  Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness .  Boston:  Pearson.