KIM Chart Journal Club

Reading: Promoting Self-Questioning Through Picture Book Illustrations

Author: Gayla Lohfink
Date: 2012
Complete the following chart, based upon the five most salient Key Concepts in the reading for you.

Key Concept

Information

List the key concepts discussed in the article,

one concept per for.

What information will help you remember this concept?

Self questioning is important to comprehension

Procedure in which students actively respond to a text by stopping to ask and answer
questions (thats an AZCCRS standard)
process of questioning, seeking answers, and asking further
questions lies at the heart of comprehension, (p295)

Teacher models/think-alouds
Self questioning can be taught

pattern or imitate their teachers question-word prompts (p296)

trained in using expository text structures/features as cues for generating questions
related to important ideas (p296)

Teachers should ask students questions that make them self-question rather than just
Discuss the cover of a picture book during a read aloud respond to prompts:
Alternative prompts that begin with What do you notice? or What questions do you
have? will generate student queries. (296)
Teachers may need to point out aspects of cover illustration to prompt readers:
may need to scaffold their
students examination of visual aspects
of the illustration by directing attention
to such art elements as color, line,
shape, and tone (296)
Use purposefully perplexing/puzzling materials that have Question-finding
perplexing pictures (specific minilessons to teach them is an inquiry strategy in which a
discrepant event [puzzling picture
the skill with an obvious medium, using single pictures illustration] is presented... to create
and having directed questions)
a state of perplexity (297)
In this
manner, a students background
experiences conflict in some way with
a particular event in a given material,

such that the student must seek a way or

answers to resolve his or her confusion. (297)
Thus to restore balance and adjust for
the gap between what was expected and
what was actually perceived, the reader
must now search for new knowledge
that will reduce these unsettling effects (297)

Once they get the hang of it, can move them on to

reading normal picture books and see if they can transfer
the skill (with prompting), then hopefully theyll do it
during independent reading. Should let students selfselect books to encourage this.

classroom teacher must provide the

readers with real opportunities with
picture books that may or may not have
perplexing images to practice selfquestioning.
To do this, I simply present
picture books and ask my students to
investigate the pictures before reading. (298)
On self-selecting texts:
It is in these authentic reading
situations whereby children will be
able to see how questioning makes the
search for meaning more relevant and
purposeful (298)