Questioning, often based on Freirean approaches to education, is crucial to becoming critically conscious and pedagogies. Not only can questions be posed by the teacher to the students, but students themselves can create their own, exploring ideas within texts relating to power, privilege and social, economic and cultural imbalances (Freire 1973). In asking these higher-level questions (Nappi 2017), we are able to interrupt everyday narratives and construct or co-construct new understandings and interpretations – often prompting class or group discussions. Questioning should lead to pupils exploring the text’s topic and the ways in which it has been presented, whose thoughts and ideals have been expressed or silenced, the author’s purpose, the word choices and their own responses (McDaniel 2004). Teachers should present their questions in an integrated fashion, for example, at key points during a read-aloud of a book and ensure to give plenty of time for children to formulate their ideas and respond (Comber 2014). Examples of good questions to ask during reading of children’s literature can be found at the bottom of our webpage. Explicit demonstration of good questioning techniques is crucial to the children’s development of critical literacy skills and as such, it is recommended that educators use a gradual release of responsibility model (Pearson and Gallacher 1983) to enable them to participate.
It may also be useful to consider the Socratic method of questioning (Paul and Elder 2019). Within this idea, there are 6 categories of questions: clarifying concepts, probing
assumptions, probing rationale, questioning viewpoints, probing the implications and questioning the questions - all of which are deemed to be imperative to effective critical analysis of texts. Similarly, referencing Bloom’s Taxonomy and Christenbury and Kelly’s (1983) Questioning Circle (as pictured) can be useful in encouraging these deeper level questions and answers.
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