"Mustache" Questions

I have a love hate relationship with my newest product, "Mustache" Questions: Reading Literature Key Ideas and Details.  I love it because I'm excited to use it next year and it has mustaches, which my kids found hysterical last year.  I hate it because I have changed it multiple times and ending up putting two versions together because I couldn't decide how I wanted it.  And I still want to make it for Craft and Structure and Integration of Knowledge.


For those of you not familiar with the ELA CCSS, the Standards for Reading are broken into 3 clusters:

• Key Ideas and Details (RL1, RL2, RL3)
• Craft & Structure (RL4, RL5, RL6)
• Integration of Knowledge (RL7, RL8, RL9)

*RL10 (Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity) is part of all the clusters.

Soooo, my goal was to make a product to add some fun to text dependent questions.  Being new to third last year and it being the first year 3rd taught the CC Reading Standards, I did not have "fun" ways to teach answering the deeper level questions.  The kiddos were kinda scared of them.  I think so many had heard about BCRs and MSA that they immediately thought the questions were too hard.  I wanted to make them easier and not so scary.

I started with teaching about evidence and finding evidence in the text.  We used small  magnifying glasses when we "hunted" for clues and evidence in the text.  We also played with legos and talked about how the evidence has to connect to the question and explain our answer.  We did most of this in small groups and I modeled how to write the answers.  Then I had the kids begin to write.  Our first goal was to answer the question correctly and tell orally me the evidence/text support.  Once they were doing pretty well, I had them begin to write the support in their answers.

Much of it became all the vocabulary to make sure the kids knew what the questions were asking and what was expected (meaning: when to include details from the text). We learned there are two types of questions.
1.  skinny/thin questions that ask what, who, when, and where questions.
2.  fat/thick question are two-part questions, ask how or why, ask for evidence/details, or ask you to explain or support your answer.
I did not always add the statement telling them to support your answer with details from the text because I noticed they only did it if that was part of the question.  They need to learn to just do it.

All year I wanted to make cards of questions.  There are so many different ways to word questions and unfortunately that alone could trick some of my kiddos.  So first I thought it would be fun to put all the questions on mini-mustaches, glue them to sticks or straws and have them in a cup in group.  I was thinking that whoever was helping to answer the question would get to hold the mustache and "wear it" as they share.  Once we learn how to answer each question, I  would put it in the reader's response corner that I'm planning for this year.  That way the students could answer those questions about their independent reading. But as I made it, I changed my mind.  I wanted the questions on cards that I could easily file them but still have them handy for reading.  But then I'd lose the question on the mustache.  Well, I made both.  Not sure exactly  how I'll use this.  I think I'll teach the questions using both but then put the mustaches in the reading response area and keep the cards for reading group and whole group lessons.

Here it is...."Mustache Questions": 3rd Grade Common Core State Standards, Key Ideas and Details.
It has 30 questions in all, 5 are RL1 and/or general reader response questions, 13 questions for RL2, 12 questions for RL3 and blank pages to write more.  It also has 3 pages of the questions on mustaches that can be cut out, laminated, and glued to craft sticks or straws.

click here to get it at my new TN Store or  my TpT store

I'd love to hear ideas on how you could use these in your classroom and how you teach deep-thinking comprehension questions.
~Colleen  ❤