Questioning

      "Why Ask? Questioning Strategies in the Classroom" is a great chapter in our text by Fisher and Frey discussing the benefits of questioning to literacy, and how creating quality questions is vital to our students' growth and understanding of literacy. I have often experienced that awkward pause in a classroom when the teacher asks, "so does any one have any questions?" and no one answers. The funny part, is that usually, the students do have questions, but since there is no structure set forth (especially in the younger grades) for the questioning process, the students simply chose to ask a friend, rather than ask the teacher. However, this chapter is not simply about classroom questions, but how using the idea of questioning is beneficial to our students, and can be used in a very structured way to make sure that students are learning to question the text, the authors, the teacher, and themselves in order to learn most effectively.
       Fisher and Frey assert that "The self-monitoring of understanding that comes from self-questioning is underutilized by poor readers. In turn, these struggling readers learn to dislike reading because it is unsatisfying and the concepts of the textbook language are unfamiliar" (p. 83). I would have to agree with this statement, and say that it is a similar situation to the classroom experience, in which poor students who do not use questioning often leave confused about assignments or instruction, and therefore do not enjoy the class. When a reader does not use questioning to help clarify unknowns in a text, their comprehension suffers, and therefore the cyclical problems in reading continue to occur as the reader is unable to advance in understanding. I think it is important to share strategies with our students, especially those poor readers, that can help them learn to use questioning in a structured format that will enable them to gain content information to increase comprehension of the text.
     One strategy that I really like that is expounded upon in this chapter is ReQuest. This technique for reciprocal questioning of both the teacher and then students, is a great way to build upon prior knowledge, vocabulary, and clarify confusing concepts or statements through classroom discussion. This strategy works well for content areas, such as social studies because the questioner can break text into small manageable parts to ensure good comprehension. Something that I have a question about though, is can this strategy be used in small groups? Could group leaders take turns being responsible for a passage and be questioners, and so forth? Or is this a strategy in which the teacher needs to be the only questioner?

Note-Taking

             In this week's chapter focus in Improving Adolescent Literacy, the authors, Frey and Fisher, explore the theoretical  of note taking and note making, and the practical uses and needs for them in the classroom environment.
            The authors assert that in their conclusions of prominent research, students who not only take notes, but take them with a structure, purpose, and strategy. They also stress the importance of teachers using classroom instructional time to instruct students on good, clear techniques for note taking during lectures and note making while reading text independently. I agree with the authors, that especially in the content areas, teaching students how to make notes that will be beneficial to them for study purposes is extremely necessary.  From what I have personally observed, when a student gets into high school and college, and has no background for study skills and proper ways to record and organize the vast amounts of information, it can be very difficult for him or her to keep up.
          One significant topic that the authors address that I found interesting was their differentiation between "note taking" and "note making," saying that note taking is the action of recording note from lecture, and note making is the recording of notes from printed text. I think this is a significant distinction between the two, although I do not know if I wholly agree with the authors that their should be a distinction if the notes are taken correctly with the objectives of the student in mind. I actually believe that notes should be representative of what the student feels important or significant that it needs to be written down in order for the student to remember it, or the interpretation of material written down for personal understanding. I think this is virtually the same when watching/listening to a lecture and reading a textbook, even though you do have the text to look back at later. If I were going to distinguish between the two, I would define note taking as recording exact words/definition/concepts, and note making as constructing understandings/conclusions/summaries/analysis.
         Also, I absolutely loved the "dictologos" activity done by Mr. Herrera in the text (pg. 125) to teach students the value of detailed listening and selective scripting! I think this is a great tool to use in the first few days of school, when getting students'  minds off summer and ready to learn!
          My questions and concerns about this are, should teachers evaluate notes made by students, or require students to do them in a certain format? Or should we show them ways, and let them chose to make notes that are most meaningful for themselves? Also, how do we show students, or give evidence of what will happen if they take good notes?