Using the SEM-R Bookmarks

The sample questions included on the bookmarks are intended to help students think analytically about literature. Using these questions during the read aloud and SIR conferences can, in themselves, help to stimulate student thinking and provide practice and experience applying complex comprehension strategies.

Following are some simple suggestions to assist students who need additional support in thinking about literature.

During the read aloud, teachers can model their own process of applying comprehension strategies by answering some of their own questions. In addition, they can engage in thinking aloud procedures to make overt the cognitive steps that they go through to answer the question.

For example: How would the problem change if the story took place elsewhere?

The teacher could say, "I'll show you how I might answer that question. First I would think of a different place or setting--maybe here in Willimantic. Then I would think about what is different between Willimantic and the setting in the book. (She could talk about some of these differences.) Now I would think about how these differences might change the problem.".

When students answer questions during the read aloud, teachers can ask about the steps of their thinking process that led to their response. That is teachers can help them to think aloud about how they answered the question.
Teachers can provide practice with asking and answering the same types of questions with the class on consecutive days or for multiple books.
When answering bookmark questions (whether orally or in writing), one important concept to emphasize with students is that providing a plot summary does not necessarily mean that you have completely answered a question. Students should be encouraged to provide opinions and hypotheses which can be supported by evidence that they have collected from the book. One way to emphasize this concept is to encourage students to focus on one bookmark question during SIR and to use the bookmark to mark a page on which evidence to answer the question can be found. Thus the evidence can be easily located by the student during an individual conference.
During the individual conferences held with students, teachers can support the development of complex and critical thinking skills by asking students some of the same questions that were discussed during that day's read aloud (or previous days' read alouds). Again, the teacher can prompt the students to talk through how they came up with their responses.
If the student is not able to answer a question during an individual conference, the teacher can model answering the question by, again, engaging in thinking aloud procedures to demonstrate the cognitive steps that students would use to respond to the question.