In our reading workshop, we are applying our metacognition skills. Metacognition is thinking about one’s thinking. It is the foundation for other reading comprehension strategies. In making the students aware of how they think about their own thinking, we had a purposeful conversation by using various non-fiction books. I have included “thinking stems,” or sentence starters that can prompt reflective thinking such as “I’m thinking…”; “I’m wondering…”; or “I’m noticing.”
(Click on the pictures below. If you would like to know how these resources were used in class, feel free to contact me via email.)
Curiosity is at the heart of teaching and learning. The students chose books that are engaging and spur wonders. We looked for great visual features as well as quality writing. We focused on questioning strategy. It is the strategy that propels learners ahead and keeps them coming back for more. They ask questions to learn new information, to clarify confusion and to better understand what they view, hear and read. After the lesson, the students chose from different articles to practice reading with a question in mind and their think sheets were great! The great take away was, when they shared their questions and notes with each other, they found that they had answered their original question. They also found that they had some lingering questions and were looking for ideas to answer them. After more research, children documented their findings.
These are some of the mentor texts that we used for teaching the strategy of asking questions:
Click below for a couple of my anchor charts on asking questions:
Here are some of the resources that we used for these activities:
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