Today I’m starting a brand new series right here on the blog…because…I think we could ALL benefit. It’s all about the area of reading comprehension and, as educators, we are often really good at providing lots of practice in this area, but, in honesty, it’s a really difficult area to teach. What often happens is we throw lots of passages at our students and then pummel them with tasks such as WH questions, finding the main idea, summarizing, and sequencing. When we stop and look at the progress for our students, it can be very minimal and we wonder why they just aren’t getting it.
In this series, I’m going to show you some ways I actually teach these skills, not just practice them. In my examples here, the pages are taken from my Leveled Intervention: Reading Comprehension which you could buy HERE but you can also create your own intervention from it. This is by far not the only way to teach them but my goal is provide some ideas you can take back to your students tomorrow and use. And…just in case you needed this reminder: these skills are complex and are not taught in 1 or even 2 thirty minute sessions. They take time, especially for our students who have delays in language, and that is okay.
For this first post, I’m covering a mammoth of a topic, WH Questions. It’s so large I’m splitting it into 2 parts:
- Teaching WH Questions and
- Teaching how to answer them in text.
Part One: Teaching WH Questions
Here’s where I begin, especially with my little ones. Before introducing questions from text, they need to have a good foundation, things like what a question is and looks like, what words indicate a question (who, what, where, when, why, how) and how these can be answered.
- Before we begin anything, we break down exactly what a question is and what an answer is. What do these two things do (their purpose), what do they look like, and how we can identify each one. Before we go any further, my students are required to verbalize what these two things are. If they can’t put into words what they are, they won’t be able to apply them in their reading.
- Next, we break down the questions based on type and do a lot of teaching as to what each question represents. (who requires a “person” answer, where requires a “place” answer, and so on).
- There are many resources you can buy or make to teach these specific types of WH Questions and get this point across. However, something I would add here is ensuring you present and teach specific and multiple types of answers for each question. For example, we can’t just teach “who” questions are answered with a “person” and stop there because our students need to know exactly what a person looks like in text (it can look like a name “Lucy” or an occupation “teacher”). A “when” question is yes a “time,” but that could look like a specific time (5:00), a specific date (April 14th), or contain sequencing words (before lunch, after the show). My point here is that our students, especially our students with language delays, need direct and explicit teaching, with plenty of examples shown.
- To further teach this concept, you could implement an activity where, when given a question word (“what”), students need to search for and identify all the possible answers that go with that question word. This could be made into a fun detective game!
Part Two: Teaching Questions in Text
Just like math, language does build on skills. It’s essential that students have a good grasp on part one before moving on to part two.
- When I feel my students are ready to start moving into the realm of text and passages, I begin by teaching how to answer a question correctly. The way I teach it is that they must repeat part of the question for it to be answered correctly. I’m a stickler and realize not everyone does this but I do feel it helps reinforce the correct answer by providing a sort of answer “check.” You can see in the examples (answering The story is about a girl named Mable” instead of just answering “Mable”), the repetition of the question itself helps reinforce the answer the student is looking for is a person. You can practice this by providing one word answers and answers that are thorough and see if students can identify which answer is better.
- You might think at this point we’re finally ready to start answering questions in text (I promise, we almost are!) But there is one more skill I like to practice before we do and that is the ability to locate information in the text that is also in the answer. I’ll often provide a passage and give a handful of different highlighters to my students. I’ll highlight some key information in a question and then ask them to use the same color of highlighter to find those same words in the passage. For example, in the passage below, students are asked to locate and highlight the words “tiny fairy” in the first question, “Gabriella live” in the second question and so on. This activity gets them use to ensuring their answer is correct (or at least within the same realm of the question).
- Once students are comfortable doing this, they are ready to start answering questions from text. For my students, I teach them that in order for it to be correct, they need to be able to justify their answer from evidence in the text and repeat some of the question in their answer.
After we practice answering questions, something fun I like to do with my students is switch roles. I provide a passage and they become the teacher, coming up with questions from it for me to answer. Because working on correctly answering questions includes the flip side of working on correctly asking questions.
I hope this gave you some ideas and a sort of hierarchy go from when teaching WH Questions. Like I said, it can be taught multiple ways but it’s important to be consistent, concrete, and visual.
If you’d like to purchase this resource, click below (available in both a printed version and a No Print version)
Leveled Intervention for Reading Comprehension (Printed Version)
Leveled Intervention for Reading Comprehension (No Print Version)
Leveled Intervention for Reading Comprehension Bundle (Printed and No Versions)
If you like this series, please let me know (I depend on your feedback to guide the topics I write about) and consider pinning the image below!
Stephanie says
February 20, 2020 at 3:12 pmHi Nicole!
This blog series is EXACTLY what I need! I’ve been so worried about just “practicing” reading comprehension and seeing no results. I am super excited to begin teaching Wh questions in this systematic way to assist with reading comprehension.
I cannot wait for the next post in this series!
Nicole Allison says
February 20, 2020 at 4:12 pmYay!! So glad to hear it! And me too, which is exactly why I’m writing it!
Andrea says
February 20, 2020 at 11:16 pmTHANK YOU!!!! Couldn’t be more helpful. Please please share more!
Nicole Allison says
February 26, 2020 at 2:19 pmSo glad you found it helpful!
Alysa says
February 25, 2020 at 11:13 amHi Nicole!
Love your blog post on how to teach reading comprehension. Do you sell the materials you that are shown?
Thank you,
Alysa
Alysa says
February 25, 2020 at 11:16 amHi Nicole!
Love your blog post on how to teach reading comprehension. Do you sell the materials that are shown?
Thank you,
Alysa
Nicole Allison says
February 26, 2020 at 2:19 pmHi Alysa! Thanks for asking (I’m so glad you found this post helpful!) The link to purchase the Leveled Intervention for Reading Comprehension (printed version) is: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Leveled-Intervention-for-Reading-Comprehension-Printed-Edition-4715547
For the No Print version you can use on a tablet, the link is https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Leveled-Intervention-for-Reading-Comprehension-No-Print-5062537
Please let me know if you have any questions!
Rachel says
February 25, 2020 at 11:36 amLove this! What resource are those worksheets from?
Nicole Allison says
February 26, 2020 at 2:18 pmHi Rachel! Thanks for asking (I’m so glad you found this post helpful!) The link to purchase the Leveled Intervention for Reading Comprehension (printed version) is: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Leveled-Intervention-for-Reading-Comprehension-Printed-Edition-4715547
For the No Print version you can use on a tablet, the link is https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Leveled-Intervention-for-Reading-Comprehension-No-Print-5062537
Please let me know if you have any questions!
Elissa says
February 25, 2020 at 2:49 pmLOve the wh questions. I do it about the same but love your materials!
Nicole Allison says
February 26, 2020 at 2:18 pmSo glad you found it helpful!
Danielle says
February 25, 2020 at 3:26 pmThis was very helpful! As a CF this year, I had this question at the beginning of the year and now feel like I have the tools to effectively teach this important skill. Thank you Allison!
Nicole Allison says
February 26, 2020 at 2:18 pmSo glad you found it helpful!
Meg says
February 25, 2020 at 4:29 pmThis is fabulous, thank you for sharing your ideas, explicitly!
Nicole Allison says
February 26, 2020 at 2:18 pmSo glad you found it helpful!
Frances Weldon says
February 25, 2020 at 11:52 pmWhat a great idea! Love your examples and packet.
Nicole Allison says
February 26, 2020 at 2:17 pmSo glad you found it helpful!
Kim says
February 26, 2020 at 3:55 amDo you sell the above resources for wh-questions? I didn’t see a link.
Nicole Allison says
February 26, 2020 at 2:17 pmHi Kim! Thanks for asking (I’m so glad you found this post helpful!) The link to purchase the Leveled Intervention for Reading Comprehension (printed version) is: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Leveled-Intervention-for-Reading-Comprehension-Printed-Edition-4715547
For the No Print version you can use on a tablet, the link is https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Leveled-Intervention-for-Reading-Comprehension-No-Print-5062537
Please let me know if you have any questions!
Jen Menzel says
February 26, 2020 at 12:56 pmAre the materials above located on TPT? Right now I am overwhelmed and don’t have time to recreate it. I looked up your name and put in wh-questions, but the only related item was a receptive language pack. Is that what contains these pages? Love the materials I have already purchased from your site!!
Nicole Allison says
February 26, 2020 at 2:17 pmHi Jen! Thanks for asking (I’m so glad you found this post helpful!) The link to purchase the Leveled Intervention for Reading Comprehension (printed version) is: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Leveled-Intervention-for-Reading-Comprehension-Printed-Edition-4715547
For the No Print version you can use on a tablet, the link is https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Leveled-Intervention-for-Reading-Comprehension-No-Print-5062537
Please let me know if you have any questions!
Brittany says
March 4, 2020 at 2:39 amI found this post very informative! I am going to change the way I approach WH questions. Thanks so much!
Nicole Allison says
March 4, 2020 at 3:26 pmI’m so glad! Thanks for letting me know!
Kim Marie says
May 25, 2020 at 12:36 pm***APPLAUSE****
BRAVO!!
jurnalindonesia.co.id says
June 13, 2020 at 5:47 pmHey, what is your current setup and what are the pros and cons.
Felicia Lawrence says
June 17, 2020 at 4:34 pmLove your information.
Nicole Allison says
July 1, 2020 at 12:35 pmThank you Felicia!
benh vien da khoa hai an says
November 15, 2020 at 8:26 pmHaving read this I thought it was very informative. I appreciate you spending some
time and energy to put this content together. I once again find myself spending a
lot of time both reading and posting comments. But so what, it
was still worthwhile!
Julie says
December 21, 2020 at 2:53 amLove this series. It was so informative. I completely changed the way I do sessions now. I wish there was more!
Nicole Allison says
February 1, 2021 at 6:52 pmHi Julie! I do have a monthly newsletter that sends an email touching on a different topic each month (for example, WH questions is one month, summarizing is another, etc.). Here’s the link if you’d like to sign up! http://speechpeeps.com/teaching-reading-comprehension
Suzanna says
December 21, 2020 at 1:46 pmAfter I originally commented I appear to have clicked on the -Notify me when new comments are added- checkbox and from now on whenever a comment is added I recieve 4 emails
with the exact same comment. Perhaps there is an easy method you can remove me from that service?
Cheers!
Barbara Sutton says
February 1, 2021 at 4:21 amHello Nicole,
I appreciate the way you comprised your lesson on the WH questions.
Is this lesson for sale? If so, my struggling learners would benefit from this lesson.
Nicole Allison says
February 1, 2021 at 6:49 pmHi Barbara,
Yes, this lesson is sold in my TPT store. Here is the link to the digital download to print: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Leveled-Intervention-for-Reading-Comprehension-Printed-Edition-4715547
And here is the link to the digital download you can use on your computer for distance learning: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Distance-Learning-Leveled-Intervention-for-Reading-Comprehension-No-Print-5062537