Described by Manzo (1969) ReQuest, an acronym for Reciprocal Questioning, is one strategy that help students develop the skills for asking higher order questions of content area text. The procedure is quite simple:
Hand students a well controlled piece of text you want them to read. Make sure it has a number of paragraphs. Ask students to read the first paragraph silently as you do the same. When you finish reading turn your copy of the text over so you cannot see it and ask students to ask you questions from the text you just read.
If the questions fall into the first two categories of Bloom’s Taxonomy, Knowledge or Understanding, then answer them with as brief a response as possible. Don’t be afraid to tell students that the question they just asked contains a detail that you didn’t pay much attention to while you were reading. Even get a few of these wrong.
If the students’ questions fall into the middle two categories of Bloom’s Taxonomy, Application or Analysis, then provide an elaborated response drawing from the text, intertextual connections and personal experience.
Finally, if the students’ questions fall into the top two categories of Bloom’s Taxonomy, Synthesis or Evaluation, then preface your response with the following statement: “That’s a good question, the kind of question I might have asked myself!” Go on to give an extended elaboration on the question, even more so than in the second instance. Finally, end your response with the same phrase with which you introduced your answer.
Not only will students beg for you to do this activity over and over, but within 2 or 3 sessions the quality of questions will improve so that most of the questions being asked fall in the category of higher order thinking.
