When reading a text, students should be gaining meaningful insight and using metacognitive strategies to better understand what is taking place within the text. Their overall reading experience and the thinking they carry out will be impacted by the questions that are asked before, during, and after reading. The ability students have to access prior knowledge and connect it to what they are reading can potentially demonstrate their comprehension, so it is important for educators to activate this prior knowledge through the use of guided questioning. Guided questioning has two main functions: it scaffolds topics to help students gain information and to assess students’ learning (Kintsch, 2005). When students are actively engaged while reading, their achievement levels increase. Many educators use in-depth guided questioning to increase reading comprehension. These questions drive a student’s thinking, spark conversations, and encourage meaningful learning experiences and connections. As schools and children are changing rapidly, there is an ever-present need to improve student engagement and comprehension. Focusing in on guided questioning will help teachers develop more in depth lesson plans for guided reading, scaffold and differentiate questions, and provide a more authentic conversation while talking with students.
