Thursday, December 20, 2012

QAR- Question-Answer Response Strategies

I work with a literacy group 5 times a week and help reinforce material covered in the classroom.  My placement school uses StoryTown curriculum, so I've tried to mirror my lessons on the text book, but provide enough additional details and personal connections that the students will be able to get a clearer understanding of the material.  Right now, they are working on QAR (Question-Answer Relationship) strategies and are getting hung up on the difference between Think and Search questions and Author and Me questions.  I've tried differentiating and reminding them that Think and Search questions come from the text while Author and Me questions use the text, but call for personal opinions and inferences to answer.

I made them a fancy cheat sheet that they can use as reference (using all of my fun new free fonts!)



Then I gave them a comic with no words:


and a 4-square chart to generate and record one of each type of question.  They, the kids switched papers with a partner and answered the questions and we talked as a group about why each type of question was organized where it was!  This definitely encouraged higher-level thinking, since there were no words in the comic!  

The kids had fun using their noodles!