Wilhelm+Chapter+7

Reading and Inquiry in the Content Areas: Using Questioning Schemes to Promote Deep Disciplinary Learning

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=__** Introduction & Issues of Engagement and Competence- Beth Bielefeld **__=

Whether or not to engage our students in learning is really not a question. We must. What is the question is how do we create engagement in our classrooms? Creating an environment of inquiry will help to engage your students to become competent learners.

Teachers must create an atmosphere in which students are motivated to be proficient learners. The archaic method of teaching from an information-driven approach has taken the enjoyment and relevance out of learning for students. Students struggle to understand how they may utilize the information they have learned. "Why do I need to know this?" is often felt by students. As educators, we must find how to make learning relevant.

Teachers who strive to have active learners assist their students in moving along the continuum of engagement throughout their learning exploration.

Teachers must keep in mind the steps to engagement along the continuum:


 * **Interest**: being curious about a topic
 * **Engagement**: wanting to be involved in the tasks associated with the problem
 * **Commitment**: developing a sense of responsibility to the task and wanting to understand and abide by the community and disciplinary norms
 * **Interpretation/Internalization**: merging all the information and processes of the task along with personal experiences and understandings in order to deepen knowledge and expand abilities
 * **Application**: being able to find new opportunities to utilize the knowledge
 * **Generation**: creating new ideas and understanding by building upon the new learning
 * **Communication**: sharing the new understanding/learning through questioning and discussions with others
 * **Evaluation**: the willingness to objectively look at the information/understandings and have the ability to critique one’s own learning process

As teachers, we must be willing and able to bring our students into the subject area as student experts. We must teach them to use the language of the subject and engage them with questions, which draw deeper thought. Teach them the strategies to become student experts in the field.

“**Inquiry puts students in touch with the original works and with the actual activity of practitioners. That is why it is exciting, and that is also why it works**." (Wilhem, p. 154)

 * This scholarly article titled //__Strengthening Student Engagement__// by Dr. Richard D. Jones from the International Center for Leadership Education, explains the how and why of student engagement in great detail.

=__** QAR & Math-Ewing **__=




 * QAR works with any discipline. It naturally works with math and science because those professionals already ask what is known, what patterns can be found in the data, what gaps need to be filled, and how to best (visually or verbally) represent the data to others.
 * There are 4 ways that QAR promotes mathematical thinking and decision making. QAR's greatest strength is that is encourages personal communication, reflection on one's problem solving processes, and connection to issues in the world that the problem and strategies can help to address.
 * **Right There**: These questions help students establish the facts, understand the details from the data/text, and identify unnecessary information / distractors.
 * **Think and Search**: These questions help students discern patterns and relationships in the data, and infer proper operations necessary to solve that problem.
 * **Author and Me**: These questions help students consider how to find missing information that might be helpful. They also identify a meaningful context in which solving this kind of problem would be useful in their lives. They also help students identify and apply the proper method for solving the problem, efficiencies of solving the problem, check their work, and evaluate the effectiveness. Finally, these questions help them hypothesize and articulate the principles and test the hypothesis.
 * **On my own**: These questions help students consider real world applications of general principles and problem solving procedures, identify situations that these concepts can be used, and think like a mathematician in their daily lives.
 * The best thing about QAR and Math is that is promotes personal connections to the problem, reflection to ones problem solving processes, and a connection to real world issues that the problem and strategies can address.
 * Here is an example of a guide for using QAR to help with math / data problem solving.

=**__ QAR & Science- Katy Faith __**=




 * QAR works naturally with Science and creating Inquiry Units to meet standards and encourage a curious environment.
 * In Science, QAR often follows this path:
 * Students must investigate and understand the '**right there**' of sub-questions.
 * When researching, they naturally look within and across different texts in the '**think and search**' style to look for patterns in data.
 * '**Author and me**' questions arise and are answered while making inferences from texts during research.
 * Finally, '**On my own**' connections happen when students form and answer their own hypothesis and make predictions.
 * Use the QAR method to plan backwards when creating units.
 * Always be sure to model each of the QAR strategies, especially when used within content areas. Students will make the connections quickly! When they are familiar with the 'right there', 'author and me', 'think and search', and 'on my own' strategies used in reading, students will readily apply the strategies within other disciplines. Leading the discussions to model these thought processes is the role of the teacher.

"Organizing a class discussion around QARs yields a dialogic conversation that moves kids from topical research to critical inquiry and application."
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 * This site includes a brief overview of QAR and several examples of QARs used in Math, Social Studies, and Science.

=**__ Questioning Circles and Science-Kim Runyon __**=



**Questioning Circles**-

 * ====Addresses the questions "Why do we have to learn this stuff?" and "When are we ever going to use this?" In this section, a teacher is using Questioning Circles with her inquiry unit on healthy teen living.====
 * ====Makes class discussions more lively and relevant to students' lives====
 * ====Three types of questions====

====**Pure Questions** - more fact based-type questions. These questions can be teacher generated based on their own past experiences, text generated where answers can be found in the text, or questions that can be answered based on what students know from the world around them.====
 * ====From the Wilhelm text, students were asked in their unit on healthy teen living: (Me:) //"What diseases have you had that were caused by viruses? How did you catch the virus? What kind of medical treatment did you receive? How effective were the treatments?//" (Wilhelm p. 159). (Text:) //"What are the parts of the immune system and how do they work together to fight a virus?// (World:) //"What other diseases have you heard of that are caused by viruses?"// (Wilhelm p. 160).====

====**Shaded Questions** - requires the student to combine resources to answer them such as the text and the world, the text and the self, or the self and the world. These types of questions require students to combine their knowledge of the text with their own personal knowledge and the knowledge of the text and/or the world around them (Wilhelm p. 126).====
 * **Me and text**: //"What vaccinations have you had? Why is it important for you to be vaccinated?"// These questions require the students to not only have the knowledge of their own experiences, but then to tie in the information from the text.
 * **Me and world**: //"Do you face the same risk from viral diseases as adolescents did 50 or 100 years ago? Why or why not?"// These questions required their knowledge of the world around them, and then apply it to themselves.
 * **Text and the world**: //"What impact did the smallpox virus have on Native Americans?" What effect might future viruses have?// (Wilhelm p. 160).

====**Dense Questions** - connect the students to the text and the world. These are questions that take information from previous learning (both their own background knowledge and from the text) and students connect that to the world.====
 * //Given what we know from the text and history, should people diagnosed with a deadly virus like HIV be quarantined from others? Should they be allowed to attend school? Why or why not?// (Wilhelm p. 160).

====Questioning Circles allow students to provide thoughtful answers because they not only ask fact-based questions, but ties those types of questions with relevant real world experiences, and often, their own experience and beliefs. Students are more engaged in the class discussions because they are able to see how what they are learning in the classroom connects to actual real-world issues.==== @http://eagenbeirne.pbworks.com/f/QuestioningCircles.pdf This PDF provides an excellent example of questioning circles.

=**__ Reviewing Whole Units With a Questioning Scheme-Amanda Richardt (Wilhelm pg. 161-163) __**=




 * Each of the following schemes can also work well to organize a review of an entire unit.
 * **Questioning Circle** is a way to review the unit and prep students for their final projects.
 * **Rethinking "Coverage" and Textbooks**- Much research indicates that relying on a textbook does not yield the gains that inquiry-oriented teaching does.
 * **Inquiry** leads to more engagement, retention, understanding, application, and of course, higher test scores.
 * The Textbook as One of Many Tools
 * Inquiry-based contexts has changed the way textbooks are used.
 * It becomes just one resource that provides and summation from the dominant viewpoint.
 * It allows students to call upon other textbooks, resources; including student activities and prior experience.
 * Teaching students how to ask good questions is the focus of this website. Many useful tips are included.