By Nancy J. Kane
School Librarian at Monument Valley Regional Middle School

Does this scenario sound familiar?  Students arrive at the library, declaring that they are ready to research, armed only with a vague idea of their topic.  Despite consulting a variety of resources, and being offered assistance, students leave at the end of the class with a few sketchy notes scrawled in their binders.  Having witnessed this scenario, I was anxious to explore the use of student-generated questions as a focusing tool for research projects.

QUESTIONING TECHNIQUES in READING COMPREHENSION Self-questioning techniques have long been used as a reading-comprehension strategy, in which students read a given text, and then create their own questions for review.  Students are familiar with responding to teacher-generated questions, but the skill of question generation must be taught explicitly.  Both highly-competent readers and students who struggle with open-ended comprehension assignments benefit from a questioning structure which helps them make meaningful connections to a text (Rosenshine).

Procedural prompts using signal words or question stems have proven effective in jump-starting students’ own questions about a reading selection or research topic.  Questioning activities may be scaffolded by requiring students to first generate simple questions about a short text, then to create deeper, more involved questions about a longer text.  Students can work in partners or teams to create, share and revise questions.  In the TeachQuest model, teachers instruct students in questioning techniques, highlighting open-ended, divergent questions.  In the ReQuest model, students work in groups and practice classifying sample questions, highlighting the signal words, before moving on to generate their own questions of different types  (Ciardiello, “Did You Ask”).

QUESTIONING TECHNIQUES for RESEARCH PROJECTS
If students have not generated meaningful questions about their research topic, they lack an effective starting point, whether they are looking up keywords in a book’s index or performing Internet searches.  The generation of essential questions is a higher-order thinking skill which is a challenge to middle-school students.  However, if teachers are trained in generating the essential questions, the students can be taught to be successful in generating their own subsidiary questions (Glasson).  Prompts and graphic organizers are invaluable aids in helping students generate their own questions.

GENERATING QUESTIONS with STUDENTS
I had my 6th graders choose an invention to research.  I prepared a two-sided question generator with the simple cue words:  Who, What, When, Where, Why and How on the front side, and more complex question stems on the backside:  How much, How many, How did, What if, What else happened because, What is the difference, Why did OR Why didn’t. 

For a class example, students worked together at their tables to create questions about the invention of the toaster.  Questions were discussed or clarified and written on the whiteboard grouped by cue words:  Where was the toaster invented?  Who were the first people to use a toaster?  What happens if it breaks?

Students then generated their own questions about their own invention, using the question generator form.  I collected the question forms and reviewed them, creating a master list of all questions.  Finally, I created a two-sided graphic organizer with basic fact-finding questions on the front side, and more thought-provoking, complex questions on the reverse side.  I created meaningful questions from simple ones, for example, “Who invented the toaster?” became “Who invented the toaster and what kind of education, background and job did he or she have?”  Reviewing the questions prevented a student from generating and trying to research questions which were not workable.

With my 5th graders who were studying ancient American cultures, I shared a PowerPoint presentation which showed questions I had created about the role of women in ancient cultures.  Using a think-aloud process, I walked students through question generation using the cue words, turning simple questions such as “Who were the Inca women?” into more complex questions such as “Who were the women allowed to be friends with?”  or “Who decided which man a girl would marry?”  The students used a question generator worksheet to generate their own questions which were reviewed by their teachers.

The 6th grade language arts teacher approached me about collaborating on a research project based on the novel, Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse.  Here was the perfect opportunity to use the questioning techniques. Following a very successful lesson on narrowing or broadening their topics, the students briefly perused encyclopedias and books for background information.   

The next day, the teacher and I picked a topic, “Music in the 1930’s” and walked the students through a whole class question generation process, beginning with the cue words and using the white board as a graphic organizer.  As students offered questions, we took time for the class to consider whether the question was workable or needed revision before writing it on the board.    Walking the students through this collective revision process helped them understand how to write workable questions of their own.

Following the whole class example, students generated their own questions using the cue words and the question stems.  The next day, the students reviewed their questions with me or their teacher.  We starred the questions which were most workable and helped students revise others, making sure the students retained a few questions of great personal interest.  This evaluation step was critical  to check that students were on the right path to meaningful information.  No student was allowed to begin researching until their questions has been evaluated and revised.

CONCLUSION  Requiring students to generate questions through a brain-storming process results in original, intriguing questions.  Generating their own questions allows multiple students to research the same topic from different angles.  The conferencing step between student and teacher to revise and focus the questions prevents the students wasting time researching non-viable questions and becoming discouraged.  Through the question generation process, some students discovered they didn’t like their topics and could switch before getting too involved.  After the project was over, many students identified the questioning phase as the most useful step in the research process.    

RECOMMENDATIONS
Students who begin to research with only a broad topic, lacking an outline or graphic organizer, often sit in bewilderment, reading through source materials, wondering what information to record as notes.  Students often do not understand what their topic is really about until they start to break down the topic into workable sections using questions.  Teaching our students to ask meaningful questions focuses their research task and helps students identify which information is most important.  I highly recommend a structured questioning process for any project.    The art of questioning is a lifelong learning skill which can be applied to many decisions.   

WORKS CITED                                                                                            

Graphic credits: stock.xchng    http://www.sxc.hu/   and used with permission