questioning ladder success with guided reading group New York

Vianey is leading guided reading group New York with questions from the questioning ladder, and the students are really responding!  The questions do follow the progression of lower to higher order thinking, and as we move up the ladder, the discussions are getting more and more complex.

Vianey's Questions:

Step 1: Obvious Information
-What does Wayside school look like?
-Who are the main characters?
-How was Wayside built?

Step 2: Key Detail
-What happens on a normal school day at Wayside?

Step 3: Stated Relationships
-Why did Calvin take the note if there is no Ms. Zarves?

Step 4: Connect Some Dots/Play Detective
-What lesson did they learn in Chapter 16?
-Why doesn't Rhondi like her teeth when everyone says they're adorable?

Step 5: Connect Lots of Dots/Play Super Detective
-What are three ways Wayside changes over the story?
 -How do the characters change throughout the story?

Step 6: What is the message Louis Sachar is trying to tell us?

Step 7: no questions

Students had good discussions about all the questions Vianey posed, but the Step 6 question really blasted off into an interesting conversation.  Here are some transcript notes:
Tommy: Some people are different and have different talents
Omar: It's good to be different.
Me: Why do you think it's good to be different?
Donnell: Everyone's unique.
Me: So what?  Why's that important?
Donnell: If you copy off of people, everyone would do the same thing.
Vianey: If everyone did the same thing, life would be boring and when you meet new people it's interesting because they're different.
Tommy: One time I was talking about this with my mom because if everyone had the same talents, you wouldn't be able to learn to do something else.

I think that this conversation showed they were understanding what Stories from Wayside School is really about, not just on the micro level of what happened, but on a macro level of what the theme and message of the story was about.  I wish they would have used some examples of episodes and events from the story to support their macro view of the text.  Nevertheless, that is a mini-lesson for the future.

Afterwards I asked them: What did you notice as we went through the questioning ladder?
Vianey: as we went down our thoughts got deeper
Donnell: questions got harder as we went from step 1

I was very encouraged by this session for several reasons.
1) Vianey really took the questioning ladder and ran with it.  I think she was able to come up with much more interesting and complex questions than she would have if I had just told her to generate questions and then categorize them according to Bloom's and prioritize.
2) I thought that the guided reading group as a whole was really starting to get a feel for how to use the questioning ladder, and the value it added in terms of helping students ask deep questions that lent themselves to rich discussion.  I'm hoping this group will take the role of question master in many of their literature circles and model how to use the questioning ladder.