KIM Chart Journal Club

Name: Molly Harbottle

Reading: Promoting Self-Questioning Through Picture Book Illustrations

Author: Gayla Lohfink
Date: 2012
Complete the following chart, based upon the five most salient Key Concepts in the reading for you.

Key Concept
List the key concepts discussed in
the article, one concept per for.

Introducing Self-Questioning in Read Alouds

Information
What information will help you remember this concept?

Begin with the familiar practice of an interactive read aloud.

Although they expect the visual image/picture to signal personal and
social meaning (Wolfenbarger & Sipe, 2007, p. 274), teachers may need
to scaffold their students examination of visual aspects of the illustration
by directing attention to such art elements as color, line, shape, and tone
(ONeil, 2011).

Question-finding is an inquiry strategy in which a

discrepant event [puzzling picture illustration] is
presented... to create a state of perplexity (p. 229).
In using perplexing picture book illustrations, I suggest a
framework of minilessons.
To encourage self-questioning, I ask my students what
they notice about the illustration and what questions they
have about the images in the illustration.

Promoting Self-Questioning

Plan for Self-Questioning

To do this, I simply present picture books and ask my students to

investigate the pictures before reading.
The practice of asking, seeking, and thinking together with a peer about
the illustration is the intention of the picture-investigation partner activity.

Memory clue
Draw a visual that
will help you
remember this key
concept. (NOT
REQUIRED)


Apply Self-Questioning

Self-Questioning

As demonstrated, teachers can explicitly show students how attending to

visual elements in an illustration may spur questions and foster
engagement in texts.
Owning the process of selecting questions allows young readers to rely on
themselves for meaning making an important change for teachers as
they seek to teach comprehension strategies effectively and move away
from extensive teacher-initiated questions that oftentimes yield only
passive student responses.
The process of questioning, seeking answers, and asking
further questions lies at the heart of comprehension, as
Hervey (2006, p. 68) has stated, elementary teachers need
additional strategies for how to use the act of questioning
as a pathway to comprehension.
Readers can be taught how to self-question by watching
their teachers model think-alouds of the process (Walker,
2005), pattern or imitate their teachers question-word
prompts (Buehl, 2009; Lubliner, 2004), or be trained in
using expository text structures/features as cues for
generating questions related to important ideas (MansetWilliamson & Nelson, 2005).