Introduction
ReQuest is a framework that falls under
the teaching method of reciprocal teaching, a method that asks the students and
teacher to engage in a conversation and questioning of each other throughout
the learning process. Reciprocal teaching is a method that asks the student to
become actively engaged in the learning process and to develop concepts through
active questioning and investigation. This ReQuest project uses the questioning
method to engage the student in the reading and make predictions about the
text. Going into this assignment I was worried that the student would not
become engaged like the method calls for but she did. I learned that modeling
my engagement in the book, and directly asking the student to ask me questions
did engage her. It was a much more simple method to use than I had anticipated.
Method
Guideline Adjustments
When
completing the project I did make a few changes to the steps. The student I worked
with was my 3rd grade cousin Lily. I was unsure about where she
stands in terms of reading level so we had a brief conversation about what
books are easy to read and which ones are difficult for her to read. I found a
book at home, Stuart Little, by
E.B. White, that I thought would be new to her and we talked about it before we
started reading. She said that she remembered reading a few pages of the book
once before. I asked if it was easy, hard or somewhere in the middle. She said
somewhere in the middle. What I found from listening to her read the first
chapter was that it most likely was at the instructional level. She had to
pause several times to decode unfamiliar words. I observed her using several
strategies while reading that allowed her to read fluently and decode most
unfamiliar words with ease. Talking about her reading level as well as the
question/answer method we were going to use was a great way to start this
activity with Lily. She told me about asking questions and responding in her classroom
with her teacher.
Transcription
of the Activity
Lily: “Chapter 1. When Mrs. Frederick C.
Little’s second son arrived, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than
a mouse. The truth of the matter was, the baby looked very much like a mouse in
everyway. He was only about two inches high; and he had a mouse’s sharp nose, a
mouse’s tail, a mouse’s whiskers, and the pleasant, shy manner of a mouse.
Before he was many days old he was not only looking like a mouse but acting
like one, too –wearing a gray hat and carrying a small cane. Mr. and Mrs.
Little named him Stuart, and Mr. Little made him a tiny bed out of four clothes-pins
and a [pause]”
Chelsey: “cigarette”
Lily: “cigarette box.
Unlike
most babies, Stuart could walk as soon as he was born. When he was a week old
he could climb lamps by shinnying up the cord. Mrs. Little saw right away that
the infant clothes she has provided were unsuitable, and she set to work and
made him a fine little blue worsted suit with the patch pockets in which he
could keep his handkerchief, his money and his keys. Every morning, before
Stuart dressed, Mrs. Little went into his room and weighed him on a small scale
which was really meant for weighing letters. At birth Stuart could have been
sent by first class mail for three cents, but his parents preferred to keep him
rather than send him away;
Chelsey: “ok hang on, what does that mean? What
does it mean when they say they could have sent Stuart for only three cents?”
Lily: “ send him in the mail for three cents to
mail him”
Chelsey: “right, do you know why it would only
cost three cents to mail Stuart?”
Lily: “no”
Chelsey: “Because Stuart is so small it would not
cost very much to mail him. Mail is weighed and depending on how much a package
costs you pay to send them and since Stuart is so small it would only cost
three cents to send him.”
Lily: “his parents preferred to keep him
rather than send him away; and when at the age of a month, he was gained only a
third of an ounce,
Lily: “That’s so small” “his mother was so
worried she sent for the doctor.
The
doctor was delighted with Stuart and said that it was very unusually for an
American family to have a mouse. He took Stuart’s temperature and found that it
was 98.6, which is normal for a mouse. He also examined Stuart’s chest and
heart and looked into his ears solemnly with a flashlight. (Not every doctor
can look into a mouse’s ear without laughing.) Everything seemed to be all
right, and Mrs. Little was pleased to get such a good report. ‘Feed him up!’
said the doctor cheerfully, as he left.
The
home of the Little family was a pleasant place near a park in New York City. In
the mornings the sun streamed in through the east windows, and all the Little’s
were up early as a general rule. Stuart was a great help to his parents, and to
his older brother George, because of his small size and because he could do
things that a mouse can do and was agreeable about doing them. One day when
Mrs. Little was washing out the bathtub after Mr. Little ad taken a bath, she lost
a ring off her finger and was horrified to discover that it had fallen down the
drain.
‘What
had I better do?’ she cried, trying to keep the tears back.
‘If
I were you,’ said George, ‘I should bend a hairpin in the shape of a fishhook
and tie it onto a piece of string and try to fish the ring out with it.’ So
Mrs. Little found a piece of string and a hairpin, and for about a half-hour
she fished for the ring; but it was dark down the drain and the hook always
seemed to catch on something before she could get it down where the ring was.
Chelsey: “Why was Mrs. Little crying?”
Lily: “Because her ring fell off and went down
the drain.”
Chelsey: “What do you think might happen next, do
you think Stuart might be able to help Mrs. Little get the ring back?”
Lily: “I think they might take the piped apart
and stick something else down there to get it, or maybe, Stuart is really small
so he could probably fit down the drain to get the ring”
Chelsey: “Ok lets find out”
Lily: “‘What luck?’ inquired Mr. Little, coming
into the bathroom.
“No
luck at all,’ said Mrs. Little. ‘The ring is so far down I can’t fish it up.’
‘Why
don’t we send Stuart down after it?’ suggested Mr. Little. ‘How about it,
Stuart, would you like to try?’
‘Yes,
I would,’ Stuart replied, ‘but I think I’d better get into my old pants. I
imagine it’s wet down there.’
Lily: “Why did Stuart have to put on his old
pants?”
Chelsey: “He didn’t want them to get dirty. Does
your mom ever tell you or Evan not to play outside in a certain outfit or in
new clothes?
Lily: “yes, sometimes, so we don’t get grass
stains or ruin our new stuff”
Chelsey: “That’s right, that’s why Stuart is
changing his pants, he doesn’t want to get stuff all over his good pair, maybe
he only has a couple pairs of pants”
Lily: ‘It’s all of that,” said George, who was
a trifle annoyed that his hook idea hadn’t worked. So Stuart slipped into his
old pants and prepared to go down the drain after the ring. He decided to carry
the string along with im, leaving one end in charge of his father. ‘When I jerk
three times on the string, pull me up,’ he said. And while Mr. Little knelt in
the tub, Stuart slid easily down the drain and was lost to view. In a minute or
so, there came three quick jerks on the string, and Mr. Little carefully hauled
it up. There, at the end, was Stuart, with the ring safely around his neck.
‘Of,
my brave little son,’ said Mrs. Little proudly, as she kissed Stuart and
thanked him.
‘How
was it down there?’ asked Mr. Little, who was always curious to know about places
he had never been to.
‘It
was alright,” said Stuart.
But
the truth was the drain had made him very slimy, and it was necessary for him
to take a bath and sprinkle himself with a bit of his mother’s violet water
before he felt himself again. Everybody in the family thought he had been
awfully good about the whole thing.”
Chelsey: “Good job Lily, do you have any other
questions about the chapter?”
Lily: “No, can we read chapter two?”
Chelsey: “yes but first can you retell me what
happened in chapter one?”
Lily: “Well first Stuart was born and he was
really small. His mom was worried about him being so tiny so the doctor came
but he said Stuart was fine. Then his mom lost her ring in the tub and couldn’t
get it back out so Stuart had to go down on a string and get it for her.”
Chelsey: “Great job, lets read chapter two.”
Reflection
Reflecting
back on this activity I think that this is a method I will use often in my
classroom. I do not see myself sitting down individually with students and
recording a question/answer session with each of them often but the concept of
engaging the students through questions, responses & prediction seems to be
a method that will be useful in any elementary school classroom. I think that
this method of instruction allows for a great deal of flexibility. During the
time I spent with Lily we did not formally ask questions but rather discussed
the book and responded to each other’s comments. Lily knew that I was expecting
her to think of questions and she would stop me from reading when she thought
of one to ask. Most of her questions were related to words or ideas that were
foreign to her which showed me that she was not just listening to me read or
just reading the words on the page but instead she was processing the text and
comprehending what we were reading. I believe this activity was successful and
will be helpful for me when I am teaching young students to develop
comprehension strategies.
Strategy
List
I
can do the following to help me ask questions while I read:
1.
Write
down notes about important information from the story/text on sticky notes and
put them in the book
2.
Stop
and tell myself what just happened in the book at the end of the page
3.
When
someone in the story asks a question think about what the answer might be
before continuing to read
No comments:
Post a Comment