Dense Questioning Strategy





Search the

ELA Web Pages:

Use this Strategy:

Before Reading

During Reading

After Reading

Targeted Reading Skills:

· Interpret and synthesize recurring themes/ideas

· Pose personally relevant questions about texts

· Relate new information to prior reading and/or experience by making text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world connections

What is it?

Leila Christenbury (1998) suggests using this strategy to teach students to ask different types of questions. Students develop a series of questions that get increasingly more sophisticated. It begins with the reader posing a question about the text and then moving through each of the categories listed below:

Text
Reader
World or Other Literature
Text-to-Reader
Text-to-World
Text-to-Other Literature
Reader-to-World
Reader-to-Other Literature
Dense Question

When students pose questions about a text using these multiple perspectives it is bound to make their interaction with and understanding of the text deeper and richer.

What does it look like?

The dense questioning strategy can be organized in chart form (see model below) or in overlapping circles (click here for example).

Dense Questioning
Catcher in the Rye

Type of Question	Description	Questions Generated
Text	Information found in the text	Who is the narrator of the story?
Reader	Reader’s experience, values, and ideas	Have you ever felt fed up with everything and just wanted to take off, get away on your own?
World or Other Literature	Knowledge of history, other cultures, other literature	What other character—in a book or movie—would you compare the main character to?
Text / Reader	Combines knowledge of text with knowledge of history and other cultures	What characteristics do you share with the main character?
Text / Other Literature	Combines knowledge of text with knowledge of other pieces of literature	How does Holden’s relationship with his sister compare with Esperanza’s in The House on Mango Street?
Reader / World	Combines knowledge of reader’s own experiences with knowledge of other culture and peoples	In what ways are teenagers in other countries similar to American teens? In what ways are they different?
Reader / Other Literature	Combines knowledge of reader’s own experiences with other pieces of literature	In what ways are you similar to and/or different from Holden and Esperanza?
Dense question	Combines knowledge of all three areas into one "dense question	Why does Holden feel alienated and how is that related to what many of today’s teens feel? Include in your answer a discussion of the extent to which you do or don’t share these same feelings and why.

How could I use, adapt or differentiate it?

Students can develop these questions during the reading process for one or more of the purposes listed below:
1. to pose questions for a partner, small group or class discussion
2. to interact with each of the chapters in a text as a way to gain multiple perspectives
3. to develop topics for writing assignments (for example: the dense question can be reworked as a thesis statement for a formative or summative assessment on the text

Different groups can be assigned the responsibility to generate different types of questions, and then students can be reconfigured to share their questions