295

TE ACHING TIP

PROMOT I NG
SELF- QU EST ION I NG

T H ROUGH
PIC T U RE BOOK
I LL US T R AT ION S
Gayla Lohfink

n their small literature group, fourth graders

read aloud and discuss the picture book, Roberto
Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates (Winter,
2008). They read about how Roberto Clemente,
a Puerto Rican baseball player, had received little
respect from others outside of Pittsburg until the
World Series of 1971. Students talk together and
assert the baseball reporters hated him [Clemente]...
because hes a foreigner. Angelica (pseudonym)
interrupts the groups talking and says, I have a
question: How long has he played? Like how many
games?...Cause I was thinkingwhat ifwhy do
you not think hes getting the recognition? What if
it ISNT because hes Puerto Rican? (February 23,
2011).
As an observer/participant in this literature group,
I often observed Angelicas self-elicited questions,
and I wondered, how can we (as teachers) get all our
students to think critically and generate questions
like this? The National Research Council (2000)

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pp. 295299

asserts that children are naturally inquisitive about

the world, so shouldnt their questioning abilities be
reflected in reading?
Unfortunately, that is not always observed
(Walker, 2005). Arguably then, if the process of
questioning, seeking answers, and asking further
questions lies at the heart of comprehension, as
Hervey (2006, p. 68) has stated, elementary teachers
need additional strategies for how to use the act of
questioning as a pathway to comprehension. My
intent with this article is to offer techniques that
involve the use of picture book illustrations as a
means of facilitating an elementary childs selfquestioning development.

Gayla Lohfink is an assistant professor at Wichita State University, Kansas,

USA; e-mail gayla.lohfink@wichita.edu.

DOI:10.1002/TRTR.01124

2012 International Reading Association

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To begin, much research indicates

that readers who use self-questioning
effectively monitor and increase their
comprehension of text (Lubliner, 2004;
Manset-Williamson, Dunn, Hinshaw,
& Nelson, 2008; Walker, 2005).
Basically, as Angelica illustrated, selfquestioning is a procedure in which
students actively respond to a text by
stopping periodically to ask and answer
questions. Readers can be taught how to
self-question by watching their teachers
model think-alouds of the process
(Walker, 2005), pattern or imitate their
teachers question-word prompts (Buehl,
2009; Lubliner, 2004), or be trained in
using expository text structures/features
as cues for generating questions related
to important ideas (Manset-Williamson
& Nelson, 2005).
Typically, teachers direct such
instruction explicitly and then
begin to fade out their directions
as students assume more and more
responsibility for generating selfquestions (Manset-Williamson et al.,
2008). Some readers, like Angelica,
take on this task vigorously, whereas
others do not. Unfortunately for such
readers, their transactions with texts
(Rosenblatt, 1986) result in diminished
comprehension and, frequently, reading
achievement. How do teachers keep the

Pause and Ponder

How do elementary teachers transfer the

responsibility of asking questions during
reading to their elementary students?

How do elementary teachers help their

students use the visual information in
picture book illustrations to think critically?

What picture books may foster students

questioning?
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Self-questioning is a procedure in which

students actively respond to a text by stopping
periodically to ask and answer questions.

questioning going, especially for young

readers? Investigating picture book
illustrations may be an effective selfquestioning approach. The following are
techniques to promote self-questioning
via picture book illustrations.

knowledge or the ability to interpret

information in a picture will facilitate
a readers search for meaningful clues.
Questions regarding why a certain color
(for example) is used in a picture assist
with their critical thinking development.

Introduce Self-Questioning
in Read-Alouds

Promote Self-Questioning
Using Selected Perplexing
Illustrations

To facilitate students self-questioning,

elementary teachers may begin with the
familiar practice of an interactive readaloud. Typically, teachers present the
title and cover illustration of a picture
book and ask their students to predict
what they think the story will be about
(Cooper, 2009). Although this common
practice may engage students, such
a prompt does not lead them to selfquestion, but rather to respond with
statements. Alternative prompts that
begin with What do you notice? or
What questions do you have? will
generate student queries.
Children in the 21st century engage
daily with intensely visual media
(Hassett & Schieble, 2007), so their
interactions with a story begin with
this cover illustration. Although they
expect the visual image/picture to
signal personal and social meaning
(Wolfenbarger & Sipe, 2007, p. 274),
teachers may need to scaffold their
students examination of visual aspects
of the illustration by directing attention
to such art elements as color, line,
shape, and tone (ONeil, 2011). ONeil
suggested that developing visual literacy

Another way to foster readers selfquestioning is via specific learning

materials embedded with puzzling
situations (Ciardiello, 2003), such as in
perplexing picture book illustrations.
Ciardiello explained how to use these
materials through the technique of
question finding: Question-finding
is an inquiry strategy in which a
discrepant event [puzzling picture
illustration] is presented... to create
a state of perplexity (p. 229). In this
manner, a students background
experiences conflict in some way with
a particular event in a given material,
such that the student must seek a way or
answers to resolve his or her confusion.
To me, an example of a discrepant
event is the perplexing illustration
in the picture book, The Sweetest Fig
(Van Allsburg, 1993), whereby several
Parisians, including the main character,
Monsieur Bilbot, are viewing the Eiffel
Tower as it slowly bends over with its tip
drooping toward the ground. According
to Ciardiello (2003), the reader viewing
this illustration undergoes a process of
question-finding (p. 230), as his or

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her mind is stimulated by the perplexity

of the Eiffel-Tower-bending-over event
in such a way that his or her sense of
equilibrium is disrupted.
Thus to restore balance and adjust for
the gap between what was expected and
what was actually perceived, the reader
must now search for new knowledge
that will reduce these unsettling effects
(Ciardiello, 2003, p.230). Referencing
this question-finding strategy on
Berlynes (1960) curiosity theory,
Ciardello recommended that such
searches be elicited via certain learning
materials (e.g., cartoons, photographs).
I have added perplexing picture book
illustrations to his list.
In using perplexing picture book
illustrations, I suggest a framework of
minilessons. For example, I begin a
minilesson by stating that good readers
ask themselves questions (Lubliner, 2004).
Then I show the students a perplexing
illustration without text/words (via
smartboard), like a specific illustration
from David Smalls (1985) picture
book, Imogenes Antlers. In this selected
illustration, Imogene, the main character,
is sitting upright in a bed and touching her
antlers. To encourage self-questioning, I
ask my students what they notice about
the illustration and what questions they
have about the images in the illustration.
In the past, some third graders responded
to this prompt with questions of How did
she get antlers? and How did she get her
pajamas on? and Does her head hurt?
As a class, we talked about how
the perplexing illustration spurred
our questions and how we could find
answers to our questions. This lesson
explicitly emphasizes how good readers
ask themselves questions as they read
and connects for the students how their
inquiries with perplexing materials
do indeed elicit questions. The lesson
intention is making this connection
more evident for the students.

In terms of selecting materials for

this minilesson, I use single-page
illustrations from such picture books
as A Bad Case of Stripes (Shannon,
1998) or Somethings Not Quite Right
(Billout, 2002). In this unique picture
book, a collection of paintings reflects
something that is just not right, like
a cruise ship moving through ocean
waters, yet over the top of a deep chasm
of water.
Anthony Brownes (1992) Zoo and the
particular illustration whereby the zoo
visitors at the orangutans cage do not
reflect human physical characteristics,
but rather resemble humans with cat
ears, monkey faces, and animal hair is
another perplexing illustration I use.
I have found that postmodern picture
books (Goldstone, 2004), particularly,
offer various perplexing images to use
in minilessons. As such, the following
list of picture book illustrations and
questions children have asked as they
viewed and thought critically about
them is offered (see Table).
An added minilesson involves my
modeling for students a think-aloud of
my own self-questioning process, as the
strategy of thinking aloud is effective
for self-questioning comprehension
instruction (Walker, 2005). To illustrate
how I explicitly connect self-questioning

to thinking aloud, I recently presented

the cover book illustration of Juan and
the Chupacabras/Juan y el Chupacabras
(Garza, 2006) to a group of elementary
children. I told the students, When
I looked at this illustration, I asked
myself, What is a chupacabras? and
Is that thing in the background a
chupacabras?
Although many of the children
in this particular classroom had
background knowledge of the
chupacabras and were able to answer
my questions, others did not. We talked
together about how and what I would
need to do and read to find answers
to my specific questions. By thinking
aloud, I showed the students how I
viewed the illustration as perplexing and
what I posed as questions. Importantly,
this lesson exemplifies to the students
that each of us as readers/viewers find
uniqueness in illustrations based on our
own sociocultural identities (Hassett &
Schieble, 2007).

Plan for Self-Questioning

via Picture Book
Investigations
andPartner-Reading
Once the students are becoming
attentive to the visual components in
picture book illustrations and how those

Table Suggestions for Perplexing Picture Book Illustrations

Title and author of
picture book

Description of perplexing picture book

illustration

Examples of studentelicited questions

Grandpa Green by Lane

Smith

Repeated child image in forest of trees

Why is there a bunch of

echoes?

Piggybook by Anthony
Browne

Woman looking down at three pigs

dressed in male clothing

Why are the pigs wearing

clothes?

Probuditi by Chris Van

Allsburg

Boy carrying little girl with stupefied facial

expression down the stairs

Why does she look like

shes crazy?

The Wreck of the Zephyr

by Chris Van Allsburg

Two sailboats flying and one boat gliding

through water

How did the boats do

that?

www.reading.org

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The practice of asking, seeking, and thinking

together with a peer about the illustration
is theintention of the picture-investigation
partneractivity.
elements may spur self-questions, the
classroom teacher must provide the
readers with real opportunities with
picture books that may or may not have
perplexing images to practice selfquestioning. To do this, I simply present
picture books and ask my students to
investigate the pictures before reading.
To illustrate, I recently partnered
sets of third-grade students with tieredleveled picture books to coincide with
their reading abilities. I gave each group

TA K E AC T I O N !
1. Begin interactive picture books readalouds with prompts such as What do you
notice? and What questions do you have?

2. Promote self-questioning by presenting

selected perplexing picture book
illustrations. Model think-alouds to show
how individual readers generate questions
elicited from viewing illustrations. Point
out and discuss visual elements, such
as tone, color, or line, in illustrations.

3. Partner students together and

ask them to collaboratively investigate
illustrations in selected picture books.
Provide sticky notes for them to write selfgenerated questions and then, as they
read together, ask them to search for
and write answers to their questions.

4. Encourage students self-questioning

during independent reading activities.

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Issue 4

two colors of sticky notes. Each partner

group was asked to investigate pictures
in their particular picture book and
determine at least two questions they
generated from viewing the illustrations
only. The students then wrote each
question on one color of the sticky notes
and posted the note to the picture book
illustration.
As they subsequently read aloud
together, they then searched for
an answer to their self-generated
question. Two of my students read
Little Crow to the Rescue/El Cuervito al
Rescate (Villaseor, 2005) and wrote
the question Why are there animals
in the tree? as they viewed multiple
animals in an image of a tree. As
they read the folktale about why birds
fly away when humans approach,
they wrote an answer on the second
colored sticky note: Theyre in the
tree [because] the animals helped the
humans.
At times during the picture
investigations, the students generated
questions not found in the picture book,
but as Ciardiello (2003) suggested,
we discussed how self-questioning
might end in a divergent solution
to the puzzle or it might end with
additional queries or hypothetical what
if (p. 231) thinking for another day
or different resource. The practice of
asking, seeking, and thinking together
with a peer about the illustration is the
intention of the picture-investigation
partner activity.

Apply Self-Questioning
Techniques to Independent
Reading
For many elementary teachers,
teaching comprehension strategies,
like self-questioning, is challenging
(Scharlach, 2008). As demonstrated,
teachers can explicitly show students
how attending to visual elements in
an illustration may spur questions and
foster engagement in texts. Importantly,
though, following the implementation
of the aforementioned self-questioning
techniques, elementary students need
to be encouraged to self-select texts to
read. It is in these authentic reading
situations whereby children will be
able to see how questioning makes the
search for meaning more relevant and
purposeful (Ciardiello, 2003). Scharlach
(2008) observed that readers practiced
comprehension strategies, including
self-questioning, more efficiently when
they read self-selected texts at their own
ability levels independently.
Owning the process of selecting
questions allows young readers to rely
on themselves for meaning making
an important change for teachers as
they seek to teach comprehension
strategies effectively and move away
from extensive teacher-initiated
questions that oftentimes yield only
passive student responses. Using
picture book illustrations as inquiry
tools may encourage more Angelicalike questioners in our elementary
classrooms.
R E F E R E NC E S
Berlyne, D.E. (1960). Conflict, arousal, and
curiosity. New York: McGraw-Hill.
doi:10.1037/11164-000
Buehl, D. (2009). Self-questioning taxonomy. In
D.Buehl (Ed.), Classroom strategies for interactive
learning (3rd ed., pp. 157161). Newark, DE:
International Reading Association.
Ciardiello, A.V. (2003). To wander and wonder:
Pathways to literacy and inquiry through
question-finding. Journal of Adolescent &
Adult Literacy, 47(3), 228239.

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Cooper, P.J. (2009). Childrens literature

forreading strategy instruction:
Innovationor interference? Language Arts,
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Goldstone, B.P. (2004). The postmodern picture
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Hassett, D.D., & Schieble, M.B. (2007). Finding
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ONeil, K.E. (2011). Reading pictures:

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Billout, G. (2002). Somethings not quite right.
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Van Allsburg, C. (1993). The sweetest fig. New

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Pittsburgh Pirates. New York: Atheneum.

MORE TO EX PLORE
ReadWriteThink.org Lesson Plan
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December 2003/January 2004
What Do I See? What Do I Think? What Do
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www.reading.org

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