6.3 Questioning Taxonomies & Close Reading

Questioning Taxonomies in Reading Instruction

Questioning is one of the most powerful instructional tools in literacy education. However, the nature and timing of questions determine whether they merely assess rote memorization or actively cultivate critical cognitive processing. Two primary questioning frameworks appear extensively on the Praxis 5205: Raphael's Question-Answer Relationships (QAR) and cognitive complexity hierarchies (Bloom's Revised Taxonomy and Webb's Depth of Knowledge).

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Raphael's Question-Answer Relationships (QAR)

Developed by Dr. Taffy Raphael, Question-Answer Relationships (QAR) explicitly teaches students how to analyze the relationship between the question asked, the text, and the reader's stored knowledge. Prior to QAR instruction, striving readers frequently make two catastrophic errors: either they search fruitlessly through the text for answers that require creative inference, or they rely entirely on their own opinions when the text contains specific, explicit facts.

                  RAPHAEL'S QAR TAXONOMY (2x2 MATRIX)

                        SOURCE OF INFORMATION
             ┌─────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────┐
             │       IN THE BOOK       │       IN MY HEAD        │
             │  (Text-Based Evidence)  │ (Knowledge & Synthesis) │
┌────────────┼─────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│ SINGLE     │      RIGHT THERE        │      AUTHOR AND YOU     │
│ SENTENCE / │ • Literal, verbatim     │ • Combines text clues   │
│ DIRECT     │ • Words match text      │   with reader's schema  │
│ CONNECTION │ • Single location       │ • Passage must be read  │
├────────────┼─────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│ SYNTHESIS/ │    THINK AND SEARCH     │       ON MY OWN         │
│ MULTI-PART │ • Multi-sentence info   │ • Thematic connection   │
│ OR PRIOR   │ • Compare / Contrast    │ • Answered without      │
│ KNOWLEDGE  │ • Cause and Effect      │   reading the passage   │
└────────────┴─────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────┘

The Four QAR Categories in Depth

1. In the Book: "Right There"

• Definition: The answer is stated directly and explicitly in the text, usually within a single sentence. The wording of the question frequently mirrors the exact phrasing of the text.
• Cognitive Task: Literal recall, scanning, and visual matching.
• Exemplar: Text: "The monarch butterfly migrates 3,000 miles south to Mexico every autumn." $\rightarrow$ Question: "Where do monarch butterflies migrate in the autumn?" (Answer: Mexico).

2. In the Book: "Think and Search" (Putting It Together)

• Definition: The answer is explicitly in the text, but the information is located across multiple sentences, paragraphs, or pages. The reader must gather and synthesize disparate details.
• Cognitive Task: Summarizing, comparing/contrasting, sequencing, cause-and-effect tracing.
• Exemplar: Text: "In 1804, Lewis and Clark departed St. Louis. Severe winter storms halted their travel in North Dakota. In spring, they crossed the Rocky Mountains before finally reaching the Pacific Ocean in November 1805." $\rightarrow$ Question: "What major geographic obstacles delayed the expedition before they reached the coast?" (Requires integrating details from paragraphs 1 and 2).

3. In My Head: "Author and You"

• Definition: The answer is not explicitly stated in the text. The reader must synthesize the author's clues and evidence with their own background knowledge to formulate an inference.
• Cognitive Task: Inferencing, analyzing motives, drawing conclusions, interpreting figurative language.
• Exemplar: Text: "Leo stared at the broken vase, his hands trembling as footsteps approached the hallway." $\rightarrow$ Question: "How is Leo feeling in this scene, and why?" (Text clue: trembling hands/broken vase + Schema: fear of being caught/punished $\rightarrow$ Leo is terrified).

4. In My Head: "On My Own"

• Definition: The question relates to the general theme or topic of the text, but the reader can answer it entirely from their own personal experience and prior knowledge without having read the text.
• Cognitive Task: Personal connection, ethical judgment, thematic exploration.
• Exemplar: Question: "Have you ever had to apologize for making a mistake that hurt someone else's feelings? What happened?"

Praxis Key Rule: "On My Own" questions are valuable for activating schema before reading or conducting thematic reflections after reading, but they should never be used to assess whether a student understood or comprehended a specific text passage.

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Cognitive Taxonomies: Bloom's Revised & Webb's DOK

To ensure classroom questioning spans the full spectrum of cognitive rigor, educators employ two complementary structural taxonomies:

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Close Reading: Purposeful Repeated Readings of Complex Text

Close reading is an intensive, analytical instructional protocol wherein students engage in purposeful, scaffolded repeated readings of short, worthy, complex texts. Rather than breezing through large volumes of surface-level reading, close reading trains students to slow down, interrogate the text, analyze the author's craft, and extract deeper layers of meaning.

                     THE THREE-PHASE CLOSE READING PROTOCOL

  1st READ: KEY IDEAS & DETAILS
  Focus: "What does the text say?" (Literal comprehension, main idea, plot)
        │
        ▼
  2nd READ: CRAFT & STRUCTURE
  Focus: "How does the text work?" (Vocabulary, syntax, text organization, tone)
        │
        ▼
  3rd READ: INTEGRATION OF KNOWLEDGE & IDEAS
  Focus: "What does the text mean?" (Thematic synthesis, cross-text connections, critique)

The Three-Phase Reading Protocol

1. First Read (Key Ideas and Details): Students read (or listen to a fluent read) to grasp the general gist, main characters/arguments, and surface-level sequence. Focus: What is the text literally saying?
2. Second Read (Craft and Structure): Students reread with a focus on how the author built the text. They examine Tier 2 academic vocabulary, figurative language, imagery, transitional devices, and organizational text structures (e.g., chronology vs. problem/solution). Focus: How did the author choose words and structure sentences to create meaning?
3. Third Read (Integration of Knowledge and Ideas): Students examine deep thematic meaning, evaluate the validity of claims, synthesize information across texts, or debate philosophical implications. Focus: What does this text mean to the broader world, and how does it connect to other perspectives?

Text-Dependent Questions (TDQs)

Central to close reading are Text-Dependent Questions (TDQs)—questions that cannot be answered without reading the text and citing explicit evidence from it.

• Non-Text-Dependent Question (Ineffective for close reading): "Have you ever felt sad when you moved to a new house?" (Students can answer based on personal life without reading).
• Text-Dependent Question (Effective for close reading): "In paragraph 4, what specific sensory words does the author use to show how isolated Elena felt in her new apartment?" (Requires analyzing specific words in paragraph 4).

Active Annotation Protocol

During close reading, students actively mark the text with a pencil:

• Underline key claims and thesis statements.
• Circle unfamiliar Tier 2/3 vocabulary words.
• Box transitional phrases and organizational signposts.
• Write margin notes (summaries, questions, inferences, connections).

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Reciprocal Teaching (Palincsar & Brown, 1984)

Developed by Annemarie Palincsar and Ann Brown, Reciprocal Teaching is a cooperative cognitive apprenticeship model that trains students to assume four structured metacognitive roles during small-group reading. With an impressive research effect size ($d > 0.70$), it dramatically accelerates reading comprehension by distributing cognitive processing among peers.

                      RECIPROCAL TEACHING CYCLE
                     (Palincsar & Brown, 1984)

                           ┌───────────────┐
                           │ 1. PREDICTOR  │
                           │ Sets purpose  │
                           │ using clues   │
                           └───────┬───────┘
                                   │
            ┌──────────────────────┴──────────────────────┐
            │                                             │
            ▼                                             ▼
  ┌───────────────────┐                         ┌───────────────────┐
  │  2. QUESTIONER    │                         │   3. CLARIFIER    │
  │ Generates who/why │◄───────────────────────►│ Resolves clunks,  │
  │  text questions   │                         │ words, and idioms │
  └───────────────────┘                         └───────────────────┘
            │                                             │
            └──────────────────────┬──────────────────────┘
                                   │
                                   ▼
                           ┌───────────────┐
                           │ 4. SUMMARIZER │
                           │ Distills main │
                           │   gist/macro  │
                           └───────────────┘

The Four Collaborative Roles

1. The Predictor: Previews subheadings, visuals, and preceding paragraphs to hypothesize what information or narrative events will appear next, establishing a clear reading purpose.
2. The Questioner: Formulates high-level text-dependent questions (QAR / DOK 2-3) about the section just read, querying group members to verify deep understanding.
3. The Clarifier: Identifies confusing words, figurative expressions, complex sentences, or ambiguous concepts ("clunks"), leading the group in applying fix-up strategies (rereading, morphology, context clues).
4. The Summarizer: Synthesizes the core gist of the passage in their own words, discarding trivial details and stating the superordinate main idea.

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Common Student Misconceptions & Clinical Scenarios

Misconception: Confusing "Think and Search" with "Author and You"

Students frequently confuse these two QAR categories. The critical distinction is that for Think and Search, all pieces of the answer exist explicitly in the text (they just need to be combined from multiple places). For Author and You, the answer does not exist in the text alone; it requires synthesizing text clues with personal background knowledge.

Diagnostic Classroom Scenario

Scenario: In a 5th-grade close reading lesson on a historical speech, Mr. Harrison asks: "Do you agree with the speaker's decision?" Several students begin sharing personal opinions about general fairness, with one student arguing passionately based on a movie he watched over the weekend. None of the students reference the speech text.

Diagnostic Analysis: The question asked was an "On My Own" reader-response question rather than a Text-Dependent Question (TDQ). Because the question did not require textual evidence, students naturally defaulted to personal life anecdotes, abandoning text analysis.

Targeted Instructional Correction: Reframe the prompt into a rigorous TDQ aligned with DOK 3: "What two historical precedents does the speaker cite in paragraphs 3 and 4 to justify his decision, and how does he counter the opposing argument in paragraph 5? Cite specific line numbers to support your analysis."