Applying Principles of Question-Answer Relationship
Teach students to take note of the different types of questions that can be created from a text or graphic. And because the question types are different, determining the answers requires different processes, too. For many students it never occurred to them that there was anything other than an obvious, right-there question to ask. Introduce the concepts of QAR (Question-Answer-Relationship).
- Right There Questions are literal questions that can be answered in one spot within the reading. These are easy questions that are answered right there in the reading. They are typically fast and easy to answer.
- Think and Search Questions sometimes are answered by putting together several snippets of information from the text and/or text features. Students won't find the answer in one spot but will rather have to look at several chunks of information. It's all there in the reading, but it requires students to comb through the text.
- Author and Me are inferential questions. Explain to students that these questions are not answered directly word-for-word within the reading but require them to apply what they read with their own thinking. They need to formulate a reasonable response, one that is based on the ideas presented by the author/the text. NOTE: For the math teacher, many graphs can be used to solve math problems. When students use the information from a graph (considered to be the author's text) and have to apply their own thinking and problem solving to deduce an answer, then it's considered an Author and Me question. These are high-level thinking questions.
Download a 2-page science passage and the sample QAR questions that are included.
Teaching your students to understand the relationship between questions asked and the types of answers required is a key to success on state and national reading assessments. For more information on Question-Answer relationship, check out QAR Now by Taffy Raphael.
