There are three words that elementary teachers know by heart — reading level assessments. Reading level assessments are what is used to assess students’ reading skills from kindergarten until eighth grade. These assessments are supposed to guide the students through reading passages while providing the teacher with instructional help.
Students need to be able to proficiently answer questions without assistance from an adult that proves that they comprehend the text that they’ve read. This is where Question Stems come in!
What are Question Stems?
Question Stems are to help your students start thinking about the reading standard that they’ve just read. These stems are used to prompt comprehension and get them thinking about the text, so they are better prepared to answer more difficult questions on the assessments.
For example, if you are doing a text structure, and you are looking to test your student’s comprehension of the text, you could use a question stem that matches the standard!
These questions are the same format and manner that they are asked on assessments, and they are specific!
How to Use Question Stems in Small Group Activities?
Question Stems can be used to help increase proficiency in both oral and written comprehension for your students, but these work well in small group activities too! These Question Stems are grouped by levels, and each set comes with a full page of questions, and the option to have eight on a page.
You can put them on a ring and cut them out to use in small group activities to discuss the books that your students read! If you choose to laminate these cards, they can last for years to come!
How can I use Question Stems in My Classroom?
There are many ways you can use these Question Stems in your classroom, but my favorite is by using them for group discussion. While you are reading text out loud to your students, Question Stems are a great way to check and make sure that your students understand the text they are hearing.
During your reading, pause occasionally and ask a few of the Question Stems that are relevant to the text. This will not only check and see if your students are actually listening, but can lead to some great group discussions as well!
What Do I Need to Know?
Before you get started, there are a few things you may want to know about the text! First, these assessments are going to require a higher level of questioning that will involve more critical thinking. When responding to assessments, this is going to help your students by allowing them to practice with higher-level questions. This will encourage your students to cite the text to back up their answers and have a more critical stance.
These questions are aligned by reading levels so students can have instruction and practice answering during whole group and small group situations in class.
If you are looking for a cost-effective way to promote critical thinking and comprehension in your classroom, then there are so many ways you can incorporate these Question Stems!
If you are interested in how to incorporate these into written comprehension and response, check out this post.
Making inferences is also a big part of drawing conclusions from text! Check out this post for more about Making Inferences.
Implement this Question Stems resource into your classroom by clicking here or on the image below!
