Asking questions is an important comprehension strategy for readers. Asking authentic questions encourages curiosity and engages the reader in the text. Students are more likely to be actively involved with the text when they are on the hunt for answers to their questions. It gives them a purpose for reading and promotes comprehension of that text. You want to begin teaching this strategy through an interactive read aloud in which you model and scaffold the strategy of asking questions. I use the text What Can a Citizen Do? to teach students how to ask questions before, during, and after reading an informational text. You should begin the unit by discussing what questions are. Creating a question can be difficult at first, so you will want to model for the students. I would begin by showing them photographs of citizens helping in their community. Ask students what they wonder about the photos. Jot down their questions on a whiteboard or an anchor chart. Point out to them the question words they used to begin their questions. You can then transition to the mentor text for the week, What Can a Citizen Do? Explain to students that good readers ask questions before they read a book. Point out the cover and various illustrations throughout the book. You can record their questions on your anchor chart. I also have students record at least one question in their journal. As we transition into reading the text, I strategically stop at various points in the book to model think alouds and create my own questions about what I am reading. Students will do the same. They keep their journals in their laps to record their own wonderings. At the end, they record any last questions they still have. We then discuss how to find the answers to our questions and the fact that sometimes our questions go unanswered. We then have to look at other texts or resources to find those answers. As we go throughout the unit, we discuss different types of questions. We also discuss strategies for answering questions, such as searching for text evidence like reading detectives. I also teach students that sometimes we have to make inferences when answering questions. I like to hang the posters below for student reference. Each daily task in response to reading leads up to this culminating task of answering questions. I have paired an additional text from www.getepic.com in which students make this sun craft and write things that a citizen does from the text. In the mentor text, the author says that a citizen can bring in light to others, so I thought rays of sunshine was a perfect depiction of this! I have created lesson plans for you that contains a mini-lesson for each day, text dependent questions, a daily task, and an exit ticket. You can simply print and teach! To ensure that I am super prepared for the read aloud, I print the questions that I plan to ask on sticky notes. These have helped me so much! Students will practice asking and answering questions on their own printables that we glue into our journals. Each day we focus on a different component of asking and answering questions in informational text. I always include a mentor sentence to incorporate into your interactive read aloud. I love this sentence from the book! You can have some big discussions on this topic and even create more questions to go along with that idea! Since so many are distance learning right now, I have created a digital version using Google Slides TM. It's included in the November Bundle or you can purchase it separately. These are very similar to the PowerPoint lessons I use in my classroom, but you can assign slides to your remote learners to complete the independent tasks each day. Just create another copy for each day of the week and delete the slides you don't want students to have. You can display the slides from the original copy during your live or recorded lessons. It will keep you on track and ensure you cover all components of the lesson. Here are the components included for each lesson! There are five days of lessons that include an agenda, learning target, success criteria, learning video and posters, vocabulary cards with tasks, read aloud, daily questions, daily tasks, exit ticket, wrap up, and self assessments for each of the five days! These are a lifesaver! This is such a wonderful book! It's a topic that so many can learn from. It also generates some great questions and conversations from students. :) What Can a Citizen Do? Interactive Read Aloud DIGITAL What Can a Citizen Do? Interactive Read Aloud November Printable and Digital Bundle November Digital Bundle