QAR for the Primary Grades

We all know that the easiest way to increase student achievement is to improve instruction and questioning is the most powerful tool in our teaching repertoire.  The CCSS rely heavily on text-based evidence and higher-level thinking.  Questioning really builds the bridge between literal and inferential understanding and content knowledge.  

Recently, I read something about questioning that is based on Costa' work:

Well-structured questions include three parts: an invitation to think, a cognitive process and a specific topic.  “The order of the three parts may vary, but all three are necessary to formulate an effective question to promote thinking.”  This strategy is based on the work of Costa and the “Three Story Intellect.”  It is a very simple yet profound strategy for questioning.  How simple is that!

1. an invitation to think       "Penny, 

2. a cognitive process         can you explain in your own words

3. a specific topic               how you solved this problem?"

Here's a photo of a product I just posted on Teachers Pay Teachers on QAR for the Primary Grades.  

Right There Questions are in your hand questions - Students look closely with a magnifying glass for Think and Search Questions - Author and Me require thinking and On My Own come from the heart 

QAR Strategy and CCSS Literacy

As I became familiar with the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts, I immediately saw the correlation with the QAR (Question Answer Relationship) Strategy.  The versatility of the QAR strategy is that it can be incorporated with any type of textual passage and it works across all content areas.  QAR identifies categories of details from the text which are "right there on the page", inferred from passages in different locations within the text, and inferred from the text as a whole.  The best part is it requires students to examine the text as a whole, determining what types of information are explicitly found in the text, what information is learned from multiple locations within a text, versus that information is dependent on their own knowledge base and skills of making inferences.

I have been working with some junior high teachers in Social Studies and I have created edited versions of some of the exemplar texts (Common Core Text Exemplars can be found in Appendix B) to teach students the types of information used in the QAR strategy by requiring groups of students to develop questions from each type.  Hit my TPT button on the right and download my free QAR Lesson Plan and Anchor Chart packet which includes a 5E lesson plan and the patterns for a QAR anchor chart.  When asking groups of students to create questions from each QAR category, you can use index cards or the easy QAR Sticky Note page that you can download here . 

 

 

Directions:

1. Print 2 copies of the QAR Sticky Note page to start.
2. Copy 1 - Place a sticky note within the outline of each of the four boxes on the page. Place the page in the printer.  Make sure the page is oriented in the printer so the sticky part goes in first.
3. Copy 2 - Place this copy of the QAR Sticky Note on the glass of the printer.
4. If you like how it prints, repeat steps 1-3.  Make as many copies of the QAR Sticky Note page as you have students or make one sheet of sticky notes for each group

 

 

As an assessment piece, I created a 4-door foldable for QAR with the question stems.  You can download it here.