Your job is to involve the students in your group by thinking and talking about the section of the book you have just read. You are going to ask questions that really help the students in your group think about the reading. Your questions should require students to discuss their interpretations of the text and connect background experience and knowledge with the text. You want all students involved in the discussion and talking about issues that come up during the reading.
Your job as the Discussion Director is to come up with 5 thinking questions. You really want to make your group think about what you all have just read. You are trying to make sure everyone in your group understands or comprehends the reading. It is very important that you ask your group fat, juicy, thinking questions and not easy, right there, in the book questions.
Your teacher really wants you to help the students in your group to go back to the book to find their answers if they don’t know them. So, to help this run very smoothly, you need to write down the questions, your answers to your questions, and the page numbers where the students can reference the text to justify their responses to your questions. Your teacher will tell you how many questions and what types of questions you need to ask.
Your teacher hopes that after giving you examples of questions, that you will eventually be able to come up with excellent questions on your own.
Here are several examples of the kinds of questions you may want to ask:
MCEOG (Multiple Choice End of Grade Question)
Which of the following best describes ______________
You may choose to give a fact from the story and have the group share an opinion about your fact, or you may read some sentences and see if the group can guess whether they are fact or opinion, or your teacher may ask you to find a fact and an opinion from the reading.
Remember: A fact is true and you can prove it! An opinion is something you think or feel but it cannot be proven.
Problem/Solution
What was ____________’s problem on p._________ or in Chapter_______? How did ________ solve his/her problem? How do you predict _________will solve his/her problem? How would you solve ________’s problem?
Effect/Cause or Cause/Effect
The effect tells what happened. The cause tells why it happened. For example: The girl ran into the door because she did not look where she was going. Effect: The girl ran into the door. Cause: She did not look where she was going.
When you are asking an effect/cause question, you can tell your group the effect and have them guess the cause.
Characterization (give words to describe characters and find evidence from the book that proves those are the traits)
Hero (good guy)
Heroine ( good girl hero)
Villain ( bad guy)
Setting (where and when the story takes place)
Compare/Contrast (alike/different)
Main Idea (the most important idea from this section)
Theme/Moral (a lesson learned about life)
Plot (the main events of the story including the problem and solution)
Sequence (the order of events)
Genre (fantasy, historical fiction, folktale, fairytale, tall tale, biography, informational, poetry, realistic fiction)
Italics (look for words written in italics and be able to explain why they are italicized)
Point of View ( who is telling the story)
Mood (What mood is the author trying to create? How does it make you feel?)
Figurative Language
Simile (compares two unlike things using the words like or as: My hands are like ice. My hands are as cold as ice.)
Metaphor (compares two unlike objects: My hands are ice. )
Personification (gives human/person traits to non-human things.)